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Berry asks us to consider a different idea of the human: not the atomized consumer who will buy more tech trash if you push it on him, but the individual as a fully integrated member of a community. Where do we fit into that community, into a set of relationships and responsibilities tied to a particular place and time? Speaking at a 1994 conference on healing and spirituality, Berry said, “I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.” In his worldview, humans are essentially communal creatures, as Aristotle said, bound to each other in community and to the larger stream of life on this planet.

Read all of “The Wendell Berry Moment” by Daniel Vollaro at Front Porch Republic.

Ranging from the devastating effects of war on children to the endless problems of industrialism and the ubiquitous need for connection and community, Dispatches From Rural America captures a country isolated from its land and beginnings, too focused on mass production and output, and perilously estranged from the spiritual centers that make up the foundation of our lives. 

Dispatches from Rural America: 16 Essays by Wendell Berry is coming in the Fall from Counterpoint Press.

Dear Mr. Berry,

I’m writing to tell you about my dad, Pat Dietz, who was/is an incredible husband and father, beloved guitar teacher, and devout student of your work.

He was killed two and a half years ago, saving the life of his 16 year old grandson. My dad and Charlie were headed to a bookstore to pick out a book. In the parking lot a driver lost control of his car and sped toward Charlie. My dad wasn’t in the car’s direct path and he leapt forward to move Charlie out of the way. Charlie was spared from the worst of the impact but my dad was violently hurt. He died two days later.

The pain of losing my dad has been close to unbearable. He was the best of us.

Read all of “Letter from Wendell: How a poet and farmer and a guitarist and teacher connected across time and space” by Mark McDermott at Easy Reader.

“Berry wrote his essay at a time when it went against the tide of widespread tech optimism, a future that was garnering embrace in most households and businesses. One difference with the dawn of computers and AI is the backlash AI has generated from the start. While many think it is inevitable, and some are gleeful about its possibilities, the majority in America are uncertain of its value, and opposed to its infrastructure. This may be, in part, because of the technology itself, but I think there is also a tinge of buyers remorse on the whole world of digital technology. Many now wish they’d been as perceptive as Berry and never become addicted to the glowing screen. “

Ragan Sutterfield, “Why I Will Not… The wisdom of Wendell Berry’s essay on computers for the age of AI” The Way We Practice, 6 July 2026

In this series of poems, the guiding concerns of Berry’s life merge. Here plowing (and not just in a metaphorical sense – remember, Berry actually plows actual fields) turns up the field of memory and gives us a glimpse of the beauty that comes when we love a place and its people particularly and deeply.

The poems stand in relationship with each other. The fields of one poem become fertile soil for a meditation on language in the next, which in turn yields a prophetic vision in which “On the other side of the partition / the dead are living.”

Read all of “Six New Poems by Wendell Berry” in Plough.

Marce Catlett offers a path forward. At the same time, it reveals a road not taken. As the century moved along, the Democratic Party submitted more and more to the mandate of corporate power, doing its part to engineer what Sheldon Wolin acidly dubbed “Democracy Inc.” This structural submission became easier when, in a cultural sense, Pryor Berry became “backward” and John Berry Sr. a throwback. The party forgot both its story and its storytellers. Now we have Trump to pay.

Read all of “An Ancient Wealth” by Eric Miller at Commonweal Magazine.

Joan Zwagerman offers some thoughts on the should-be-famous debate between Wendell Berry and erstwhile Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz.

It would have been interesting to have been in the room with Butz and Berry. The sound quality, especially during the question-and-answer period, was poor, and it was hard to hear the audience.

I came away wondering if Berry had won many people to his side that day, but “winning” was not his goal. He called for a return to the traditional values of democracy, neighborliness, kindness.

Through the years, he persisted in farming, speaking, and writing. His intimacy with the land taught him to take the long view.

That long view seems to be bearing fruit. Today, more people are asking some of the same questions that Berry had been posing for decades. What are we doing with this inheritance of land? Why are we doing it? What is the truest and deepest value of our actions?

Read all of “Butz and Berry in debate” by Joan Zwagerman at the Storm Lake Times Pilot.

The debate in question can be found HERE on YouTube.

“Earl Butz versus Wendell Berry” pdf (News that Stayed News: Ten Years of CoEvolution Quarterly, orig. CoEvolution Quarterly, Spring 1978)

Though we shared time in Lexington and in the Patterson Office Tower on the university’s campus, Gurney was never officially my teacher. That said, as seen above in the ways he encouraged me to listen more intently, Gurney did provide some clear instruction, especially as I pored over his writings and documentaries to learn more about him, his influence, and his place in Appalachian literature and in bringing countercultural ideas to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Thus, I gladly count myself one of Gurney’s students. Unlike most of his students, I don’t write fiction. I do, however, write stories. And I remember vividly the moment in 2019 when I read Gurney’s “Storied Ground,” in which he insisted that “Stories are meant to be told and retold, again and again, not just by the original tellers but by others in a family or community who have recognized them as living treasures to be cared for and handed on.” As a historian, then, I learned from Gurney that it is okay to be one of those who is telling and retelling a story.

Read all of “Inside a Web of Love: Thoughts on Gurney Norman” by Richard A. Bailey at Front Porch Republic.