52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
74. The country of marriage.
Came upon this slim volume on a little shelf of poetry at a party; borrowed it from the hosts. At first, I thought I’d come upon a Berry I wasn’t that crazy about, which would be new for me. But it turns out I just needed a few poems to get back into the rhythm of what he says and how, and the second half of these poems really began to grab me. A couple sweet love poems; some “country of marriage” and some “country we have married,” meaning the specific land Berry lives on, farms, knows, loves, preserves. Some great poems lashing out at the unthinking economy of destruction. A brilliant reflection on the world of difference between his own world and the modern world, The Stranger, ending with the killer “I stand like an Indian / before the alien ships.”
And this:
Anger Against Beasts
The hook of adrenaline shoves
into the blood. Man’s will,
long schooled to kill or have
its way, would drive the beast
against nature, transcend
the impossible in simple fury.
The blow falls like a dead seed.
It is defeat, for beasts
do not pardon, but heal or die
in the absence of the past.
The blow survives in the man.
His triumph is a wound. Spent,
he must wait the slow
unalterable forgiveness of time.
