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Tulsa World

Farmer, poet Wendell Berry to receive Tulsa library’s Helmerich award 
BY MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
Sunday, March 25, 2012

He’s either a leftist or a right-wing extremist, a liberal revolutionary or a retrograde conservative. 

“I’ve been called a communist and a fascist,” admits Wendell Berry. “But I’m glad to avoid all of the pigeonholes.” 

A farmer, a poet, an essayist and an activist – not to mention a thoroughly nice guy – he simply transcends the political spectrum, challenging conventional wisdom even as he appeals to age-old customs. 

The author of more than 50 published works, Berry will receive this year’s Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award from the Tulsa Library Trust. 

Raised on a tobacco farm in Kentucky, Berry could have lived a cosmopolitan life after attending Stanford University’s prestigious creative writing program, then publishing his first novel in 1960. 

But in 1965, he settled down on a farm of his own, known as “Lane’s Landing,” in the same county where he was born. 

“I like farming,” Berry explains. “I like the work. I like the livestock and the pastures and the woods. 

“It’s not necessarily a good living, but it’s a good life.” 

Long before “localism” or “sustainability” became buzzwords, Berry strove to make his 125-acre farm as self-sufficient as possible – butchering his own meat, harvesting his own vegetables, even installing solar panels to generate his own power. 

Meanwhile, his writing also embraced the pragmatic common sense of rural life, advocating small-scale production, local markets and a reverence for nature. 

Whether he’s writing poetry or novels, Berry displays an instinctual distrust of industrialization, big government and global economics. 

“In politics,” he says, “the two sides don’t seem to recognize the people who worry about the things that I worry about.” 

Around 1981, Berry coined the phrase “solving for pattern,” summarizing his argument that traditional methods of farming can solve multiple problems at once. 

Industrialization, on the other hand, creates a domino effect of one negative consequence after another, he suggested. 

To illustrate his point, Berry described the modern practice of feeding large numbers of cattle in one pen. 

First, it creates a manure problem, which soon contaminates the watershed, eventually threatening the very ecosystem that provides feed for the pen itself. 

Old-fashioned pastures, however, create a natural balance – with the grass feeding the cattle and the cattle in turn fertilizing the grass. 

While first applied to agriculture, Berry’s phrase came to represent a broader philosophy about local, traditional patterns of life. 

Some see his environmentalism and his opposition to big business as liberal. 

Others see his old-fashioned values and hostility toward centralized government as conservative. 

Perhaps he’s neither one. 

“On the local level,” he observes, “people don’t tend to worry about ideology. 

“They’re asking pragmatic questions. ‘How do we solve this problem? How do we make this happen?’ ” 

When Berry first suggested “solving for pattern,” roughly five percent of Americans still lived on farms. 

Three decades later, family agriculture has continued to decline and the farm population barely registers on the U.S. Census, Berry admits. 

But he sees reason for hope in the growing “slow food” movement and localism. 

“That’s what I’ve spent my life doing,” he says, “trying to create authentic grounds for hope.” 

To receive the Distinguished Author Award, Berry will come to Tulsa for a black-tie dinner Dec. 7, followed by a free public appearanceat 10:30 a.m., Dec. 8, at the Central Library. 

The award includes $40,000 in cash and an engraved crystal book. 

Past winners include John Grisham in 2005, E.L. Doctorow in 1998, Neil Simon in 1996 and John Updike in 1987. 

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About the author

Born in 1934, Wendell Berry began his writing career in 1960 with the novel “Nathan Coulter,” set in Port William, a fictional town in Kentucky. 

Port William also serves as the backdrop for many of Berry’s short stories, as well as a number of his other novels, including “Jayber Crow” (2000), “Hannah Coulter” (2004) and “Andy Catlett: Early Travels” (2006). 

His poetry collections include “The Broken Ground” (1964), “Openings: Poems” (1968), “Farming: A Handbook” (1970) and “The Country of Marriage” (1973). 

Recent works include “Given: New Poems” (2005), “The Mad Farmer Poems” (2008) and “Leavings: Poems” (2010). 
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Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
Who: Wendell Berry 
When: Dec. 7 black-tie dinner, followed by a 10:30 a.m. Dec. 8 public event 
Sponsor: Tulsa Library Trust 

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