Have you read Wendell Berry?
I discovered Wendell Berry a few years back.
I loves his fiction first. Most of his novels and short stories are set in rural Kentucky where six generations of Berry’s ancestors on both sides of his family were farmers. His first novel, Nathan Coulter, published in 1960, is a great place to start reading him.
I love his non-fiction. He has been writing about the importance of the local economy and agriculture’s place in it for forty years. Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community is a collection of essays that helps us think about what is worth conserving from our past and worth preserving in our present.
And he is a poet. From Sabbaths:
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.