A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

Berry's Sabbath poems embrace much that is elemental to human life-beauty, death, peace, and hope.

For more than two decades, Wendell Berry has spent his Sunday mornings in a kind of walking meditation, observing the world and writing poems. A small collection of Berry's Sabbath poems was published in 1987, but A Timbered Choir gathers all of these singular poems written to date.

Many years of writing have won Wendell Berry the affection of a broad public. He is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is always assured and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of truths revealed.

The public performance of poetry, writes Wendell Berry in the preface to A Timbered Choir, has become vogue in the English-speaking world. Yet, he counters, his poems are created in silence and solitude, which may be the best way to read these thoughtful lyrics about country life, verses populated by trees, horses, rivers, and stars. This volume gathers nearly 20 years' worth of Berry's Sabbath poems, written after Sunday morning walks across the fields and bottomlands of northern Kentucky.