25 Comments
User's avatar
Julie Dee's avatar

“Shun electric wire”

What to be made of the modern day tech prisons we now have….

Expand full comment
Jaile Rodríguez Núñez's avatar

Hi, Poetic Outlaws. I'm Cuban and I still learning english, so I hope to write this best that I can. I'm literature and poetry's lover and most of all your posts. Seriously, i enjoy very much. I do my best for read them. Thanks for everything

Expand full comment
Poetic Outlaws's avatar

Thank you so much for following.

Expand full comment
Lisa B. Martin    zihuawriter's avatar

Timely! Today I teach my workshop - Fearless Writing - Poetry and Prose, to

15 people I have never met. Why and how we write...an enduring question and lesson even I need to learn and repeat each and every day. Set the table. Invite and embrace silence. Let it speak. It shall. Truly.

Expand full comment
Alex Morris Write's avatar

This poem has absolutely made my week. I think I'll write about it in my Substack, ha!

Expand full comment
Ken Paul Rosenthal's avatar

After a 36-hour email fast, this was the first piece I read over the "electric wire". You can find more of Wendall Berry's sentient wisdom in his essay, 'Why I Am not Going to Buy a Computer'.

Expand full comment
Gordon D W Scott's avatar

There are no unsacred places ...

Expand full comment
Sloan Bashinsky's avatar

And here all along I have felt the Muse and something raw, beautiful, ugly and/or awful that had invaded and disturbed the deepest levels of my being spawned every poem that came out of me as if it had to.

Expand full comment
Deborah Brasket's avatar

I think that's what he's saying, in essence. But I love the way you put it too.

Expand full comment
Kerry Bart-Raber's avatar

🙏🏽 happy Sunday 🥸🙃🌞🐾🦥🎋

Expand full comment
ars poetica's avatar

Oh, Berry: "There is not only peacefulness, there is joy. And the joy, less deniable in its evidence than the peacefulness, is the confirmation of it. I sat one summer evening and watched a great blue heron make his descent from the top of the hill into the valley. He came down at a measured deliberate pace, stately as always, like a dignitary going down a stair. And then, at a point I judged to be midway over the river, without at all varying his wingbeat he did a backward turn in the air, a loop-the-loop. It could only have been a gesture of pure exuberance, of joy — a speaking of his sense of the evening, the day’s fulfillment, his descent homeward. He made just that one slow turn, and then flew on out of sight in the direction of the slew farther down in the bottom. The movement was incredibly beautiful, at once exultant and stately, a benediction on the evening and on the river and on me. It seemed so perfectly to confirm the presence of a free nonhuman joy in the world." <3

Expand full comment
Dan Martines's avatar

“patience joins time

to eternity”!

Expand full comment
laure heinz's avatar

"Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment."

Wendell Berry will have to doubt my judgement.

Expand full comment
man of aran's avatar

‘a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came’ Yes. Of course, one hopes it disturbs something!

Expand full comment
Ted Levi Toldman's avatar

So many thoughts after reading this poem.

Expand full comment
Terra Incógnita's avatar

"make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came. " WOW just W O W !!!!!!

Expand full comment
Shane's avatar

Thomas Chatterton had such a tragic, short life. But his words...beautiful.

Expand full comment
Poetic Outlaws's avatar

Wendell Berry is still alive living on a farm in Kentucky.

Expand full comment
Shane's avatar

I was referring to Chatterton, but nice to know Berry is alive and well.

Expand full comment
KW NORTON's avatar

Understanding the silence is so important. I work in music production and like mixes with lots of "air" - room for silence. Insufficient silence and you cannot appreciate the notes.

Expand full comment