To view more poems I have examined, click HERE.
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
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This is a fantastic poem that resonates in me.
If someone is acting up on social media, someone else might reply caustically to that person some advice to ‘go touch grass.’ In a roundabout way, the caustic advice of ‘go touch grass’ is what Berry describes here as his voluntary self-calming method.
The reality though is that this is just good advice. We know that just being outside in nature is usually a health-promoting thing to do. Berry describes his trips outside to find peace in such a way that I found myself developing a sense of second-hand calm just from reading the poem.
The poem is 11 lines long. It is written in free verse, without a set meter or rhyme scheme (though there are examples of rhyme (lines 1,3, and 11) and half-rhyme throughout the work.) Berry makes heavy use of enjambment (where one line carries over into the next without the customary end-of-line pause). He also uses caesura – which is kind of the inverse of enjambment – in that it adds pauses in the middle of a line instead of at its end.
Berry also makes great use of imagery. You really *feel* as though you’re in this scene with him, with the wood drake, still water, and stars above.
Wendell Berry is an American writer (poetry, novels, essays, etc.), environmental activist, culture critic, and farmer. Below is a video of him reading his own poem and hearing it in his voice adds some depth of meaning for me. I hope you enjoy it.
