go through Terry Heick
I recently attended a documentary screening at the Louisville Speed Art Museum Wendell Berry.
Drew Perkins and I accepted what was called the “Prophet” in July. Now, Berry doesn’t want to be the core of the film, now titled “Looking and Seeing,” and by far the most touching thing for me is the opening sequence, where Berry’s sage’s voice reads his own poem “Objective”, “Objective”, a dazzling, dazzling montage, trying to reflect some larger ideas to reflect the clues and stanzas’ larger ideas.
The title shift makes sense, though, because the documentary really doesn’t care much about berries and his work, and involves more of the reality of modern agriculture – certainly the key theme in Berry’s work, but in the same sense, the farm and the rustic environment are key themes in Robert Frost’s work: visible, but most powerfully as a symbol of the pursuit of broader allegoricality rather than religious propaganda, rather than a destination.
See Learn through humility
Anyone who has read my own writing knows that as a writer, educator and father, Berry has had an extraordinary influence on me. I based his work in 2012School inside and out,’had exchanged letters with him, even Luckily enough to meet him last year.
Yes, the movie. You can buy the documentary here, and although I think it misses the frame berries for the widest audience, it’s a rare look for a very private person, so if you’re a Berry reader, I can’t highly recommend it.
Here, the problem of combining consumerism (advertising, selling DVDs, selling books) is not lost, but I hope the theme and distribution of the message exceeds any inherent (and miserable) irony when all of this is considered here. Also, there seems to be a stanza missing from the dubbing I included in the transcript below.
This poem was excerpted from “Timber Choir: Sabbath Poems” 1979-1997, published by Counterpoint Press in 1998.
Target
go through Wendell Berry
Even if I dream, I pray that all I see is fear and no prophecy.
Because I saw the last known landscape to destroy
Purpose – Soil bulldozed, rocks are blown up.
Those who want to go home will never get there now.
I visited the office I visited for my purpose,
Planner plans to line up on blank table.
I visited the loud factory where the machine is built
That will always move towards the goal.
I saw the forests become stumps and ditches.
I saw poisonous rivers-the mountains were thrown into the valley.
I came to the city that no one recognized because it looked like other cities.
I see the unnumbered footsteps
Its eyes are fixed to the target.
Their death destroyed the graves and monuments
Those who die in pursuit of goals
A man who was forever forgotten a long time ago,
According to the inevitable rules, those who forget
Forgot they have forgotten.
Men, women and children are pursuing this goal now, as if no one has pursued it before.
Race and gender now blend in perfectly with the goal.
What was once stimulated, what was once suppressed
Now free to sell yourself to the highest bidder
and enter the best paid prison for the target,
This is the destruction of all enemies,
This is the destruction of all obstacles,
This is to clear the way to victory,
This is to clear the promotion,
Saved,
progress,
Complete sales,
Signature of the contract,
This is to clear away the way of self-realization, self-creation,
Now no one wants to go home will get there now,
For every place of memory is displaced.
No love,
No swears for every vow,
No word special
To get individuals through
Autonomous, self-shooting, homeless homeless
Open toward goals they have not yet perceived within a distance,
Never knew where they were going,
Never knew where they came from.
Excerpt from 1979-1997 “The Wood Choir: Sabbath Poems”, Wendell Berry, Counterpoint, 1998
Wendell Berry’s “Target” Read
