I write hopeful, character-based fantasy strongly routed in the natural world. I live in Nashville with my husband, dog, and two doves. Sometimes I teach college composition.

I'm a DND player, kayaker, knitter, and wannabe homesteader. I was an English Major and have an MFA in fiction, so I have an eclectic taste in books. I love #BrandonSanderson, #LOTR, and #StarWars, but also #WendellBerry, #JohnSteinbeck, and #MarilynneRobinson

I'm here to talk books and occasionally share reviews.

20% into "New Poems by Wendell Berry (2006); and, I got some inspo already.

Berry, from 'How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)':

"like prayers prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came"

my response, "What About Us: Freaks?":

But what about disruption?
The anarchy of language;
Break barriers as police batons break bones.
Through those cracks and fissures, light can be shone.

#poetry #TheSealeyChallenge #wendellberry

> The nearly intolerable irony in our dissatisfaction is that we have removed pleasure from our work in order to remove “drudgery” from our lives. If I could pick any rule of industrial economics to receive a thorough re-examination by our people, it would be the one that says that all hard physical work is “drudgery” and not worth doing.
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/mayjune/feature/excerpts-the-writings-wendell-berry
#WendellBerry #Work #Drudgery #Farming #Farmers

Reading a bit more Wendell Berry.

It still boggles my mind that this was written half a century ago.

#WendellBerry #sustainability

🌍🌱💚🙏🏻

#EarthDay #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Interdependence #Life #Love #OpenHeart #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga #WendellBerry #WendellBerryQuotes

Useless quote for 23 April:

"I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children …"

~ Wendell Berry, 1971

#UselessQuote #WendellBerry

the whole field filled
with chicory in bloom, blue
as the sky reflected in the pond—
bluer even, and somehow lighter;
though they belonged to gravity.

Wendell Berry
from A Timbered Choir

https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2001%252F08%252F05.html

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #Poem #VerseThursday #WendellBerry

@pixiecata #WendellBerry 💜✌️

People and books that helped form who I am today:

#GrahamGreene
#JohnUpdike
#WalkerPercy
#kurtvonnegutjr
#JohnIrving
#RalphEllison
#HermannHesse
#LorenEiseley
#JamesBaldwin
#JohnSteinbeck
#RayBradbury
#FrankHerbert
#RobertA.Heinlein
#MalcomX
#KimStanleyRobinson
#JulianJaynes
#SomeTimesAGreatNotion
#WendellBerry
#WhatArePeopleFor
#EdwardAbbey
#DesertSolitaire
#TomRussell
#CarlHiaasen
#MichaelPollan
#BotanyOfDesire
#PattiSmith
#MichaelStipe
#DavidSedaris
#CormacMcCarthy

Thanks Matt. Some parallels between the movement's inspiration, Jun Hoshikawawith, and #WendellBerry, another han-nō, han-cho (“half-farmer, half-writer”):

A human community, then, if it is to last long, must exert a sort of centripetal force, holding local soil and local memory in place...

an ecosystem, even that of a working forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible... providing opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure

How quietly I
begin again

from this moment
looking at the
clock, I start over

so much time has
passed, and is equaled
by whatever
split-second is present

from this
moment this moment
is the first

Wendell Berry

Be Still in Haste

#TodaysPoem #Poem #Poetry #WendellBerry

#WendellBerry

"*Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts."*

WENDELL BERRY

@TheGuardian @l82be @DawnRoseTurner
It’s been happening for most of 20th C also. The horrific consequences of corporate capture and industrialisation of #agriculture were spelled out in stark detail and with great prescience by #WendellBerry in his 1977 seminal work, ‘The Unsettling of America’.

A wonderful book, which makes for very sad reading today. #LostCulture #ruralCrisis #BiidiversityCrisis
#ClimateChaos #Ecology #foodQuality
#Nutrition #humanEcology

But I just happened upon this site via a simple search for the title of #WendellBerry ’s new book #TheNeedToBeWhole and it seems very promising. I wish I’d found it back then. It's not that I expect to agree with it; it's that I think, perhaps, I could grow to understand it.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2022/10/need-to-be-whole-patriotism-history-prejudice-wendell-berry-justin-naylor.html

"In much of life — as in #poetry, as in #marriage — that #faith, Berry argues, springs from surrendering to the forms that bind us to ourselves and one another and, in doing so, grant us the #freedom to be ourselves together."

Form, Faith, and Freedom: #WendellBerry on What Poetry Teaches Us about the Secret to a Happy Marriage – The Marginalian https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/11/18/wendell-berry-poetry-marriage/

@Energetic_Nova another thing maybe you have heard of the saying (and have a better one for it) "jack of all trades-master of none," well that way of being is not really valued in the specialist driven culture.

#WendellBerry writes about and critiques that kind of culture. He talks about competencies of the human condition that are lost because of specialization. Food cultivation and preparation, caring for our bodes, our elders, teaching our children...and and and.

Anyway, my point, is that the value in the love of learning is lost in a culture that is hyper-focused on specialization, like in the US.

So if you aren't "good at" something then you're a failure. When, truth be told, there is so much more to it than that.

I have been good at something/specialized, it's boring and becomes un/under stimulating.
☮️

Wendell Berry's poetry is quite moving, and he paints a valid picture of the value of a communitarian, agrarian life for all.

Which, if we only had a few million people on Earth, might be a real goal to strive for.

But we have 8 billion now, and we shouldn't even want to be rid of those real human beings. Communitarian agrarianism doesn't scale to 8 billion people.

So what do we do in the situation we find ourselves in?

#communitarian #WendellBerry #agrarianism #socialism #poetry

i will never stop finding ways to
love you
enjoy you
work alongside you

#LoveLoving #PoetryOfLife

this #poem made me think of you

The Wild Rose
#WendellBerry
Sometimes hidden from me in daily custom and in trust, so that I live by you unaware as by the beating of my heart,

suddenly you flare in my sight, a wild rose blooming at the edge of thicket, grace and light where yesterday was only shade,

and once more I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before

#poetry

"We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed."

#WendellBerry #poetry

@Iragersh @bsmall2 oh so you're looking for a one-size-fits-all solution. interesting. a "sustainable urban lifestyle" in NYC wouldn't work for me in rural Vermont. However many aspects of my lifestyle are sustainable, #LowImpact and renewable. I use nature as my measure. (in the ways that #WesJackson and #WendellBerry teach). The vision of an #Earthship is to be sustainable and to meet the needs of that place -making each unique. So, for example, the one on Puerto Rico is hurricane proof, solar, multiple water collection & filtration receptacles and is surrounded by a food forest and gardens that grow native foods. it uses the cooler air from the ground to cool the living spaces. which is so important all year in a tropical climate. the specifics of that wouldn’t be useful to many places off the island/outside of a tropical climate. but the bigger ideas would be

the most impressive feature of the earthship design, IMO, is #bioarchitecture. they are built using trash/recycling and other non traditional materials. there is some real forward thinking around bio architecture that can be used in many different climates so i’d imagine in urban and rural places too.

thx for sharing your thoughts!