Field Observations: An Interview with Wendell Berry
by Jordan Fisher-Smith
The country in front of us now falls off steeply toward Cane Run and
the horse barn. Berry says he hunted squirrels here as a boy. As we
begin to descend, I am thinking about boyhood and Berry’s poetry, and I
ask Berry if he agrees that school children should be reintroduced to
the lost institution of memorizing and reciting poems.
“Yes,” he replies, “you’ve got to furnish their minds.”
The idea of poetry as furniture expands within my imagination and for
weeks, I think about a poem committed to memory as an old chest of
drawers in the corner of a child’s room. At first the thing is simply a
place to put clothes. With time, the grown man, or grown woman learns
to see more of it: toolmarks left by the hand of a long-dead craftsman,
a cornice molding around its top in a shape found on ancient Greek
temples. And by gazing at its sturdiness for so many years, he or she
knows something about how to make things that last.
A Living Pencil 
I should know to load my quote file before visiting!This is tremendous. Wendell Berry is just wonderful. Thanks for sharing this interview. I’ve loaded it to print. And I’m sorely tempted to alter my year’s list to include a Berry. (But I really need to read what I’ve already have before getting more. Such an enjoyable habit that I need to temper!)Thanks, Carol!
Oh how true!!! I loved exploring things with my paternal grandparents especially because they both had a poem, or a line, or a story from some ancient place that they would slip into the situation. I greatly feel the lack of it when living with my kids. When we find something, notice something, laugh about something, sobered by something, I think, there’s a poem about this! I know I’ve heard one before. Thankfully, the Scriptures are still in this feeble brain, so those I’m able to apply. Also, though not always so dignified, we can come up with one on the spot.
I had taught Jon when he was little, Rosetti’s (sp?) poem about “Who has seen the wind?”. We lived for a time in a very rustic house when he was 6. Ter’s mother came to visit and she HATED mice, so I spent the whole time trying to keep such things out of sight, sound and conversation, and I told the kids particularly to not talk about the mice. (We had a constant battle with them- mouse traps not with standing.) One night at dinner, Jon and I saw a mouse run under the table, Mom-in-law did not. I gave the ol’ don’t you dare say a word glare to Jon, and he grinned and piped up with, “Who has seen the mouse? Neither you nor I, but underneath the table, a mouse is running by!”
Bonnie that is too much! I declare you could write a book about your family stories.