Wendell Berry, Jim Dodge, Robert Frost, and Luther Standing Bear

I want to begin this set of notes by offering a few comments derived from two of these readings: Jim Dodge and Luther Standing Bear (starting with the latter). After my comments, I will post Liz's comments on Wendell Berry from her "Student Textual Analysis" presentation.

Standing Bear offers insight into the Lakota "love of Nature." He suggests that this love is not dyadic, but is instead entire, in a sense -- or circular. Another way of thinking about the Lakota relationship to nature, as Standing Bear tells it, is that the Lakota people were part of a family with the "natural" world around them. The way the Lakota people conceive of "religion," "family," and "morality" are all related, and Standing Bear indicates that the white people's weaknesses in these areas stem from their very different upbringing, as children, particularly in regard to the instruction they receive regarding nature. Standing Bear offer a strongly worded assessment of the difference between Lakota faith and white faith: "Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of the surroundings. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a measure of the thing they sought; while, in fearing, the other found need of conquest. For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world . . . " (276). Think carefully about Standing Bear's proclamation here: if white men perceive life on earth as transitory, what then might the resultant attitude towards this "earthly" place be? Standing Bear indicates that the attitude that stems from an idea of the "natural place" as simply a way station en route to another celestial world impacts man's attitude not just about this earthly place but about other inhabitants of this place as well. What kind of treatment, by white men of "others," might (or does) ensue, according to Standing Bear?

Jim Dodge asks us to think carefully about bioregionalism. He indicates that many people don't, in fact, know where they live. Bioregionalism is a "politics of place." We have grappled with the term "place" before. Simply put, Dodge writes, bioregionalism is "biological realism" (231). He indicates that to be "bioregionally" aware, as it were, we need to divest ourselves of the human impositions that carve and demarcate landscapes. We need to be aware of "what actually constitutes a distinct biological region (as opposed to arbitrary entities, like states and counties, where boundaries are established without the dimmest ecological perception" (232). Dodge suggests a moving away from "lines" -- we have discuss geometric perception before (hearkening Ed Casey). We do think of places as bounded zones, as geometricized (sorry to have created a word!) spaces. Can one still be bioregionally aware and be "in place" as we have discussed it? Can one be bioregionally aware and still name a specific space as a place? Dodge asks of us a more direct engagement with place (he is not dealing in the abstract like Casey might be). He asks for us to understand the bioregional distinctions around us, to be aware of them. How then do the different, the realist and the abstract, understandings of "place" and of being "in place" that we have discussed relate to one another?


Liz's Notes on Wendell Berry

Three Elements of “Stay Home” by Wendell Berry

Place
In many of Berry’s works, you will find a common theme of place. Not only where you currently are, but where you are from. Where you are leaving and coming back to. In “Stay Home” he has found his place “I will wait here in the fields to see how well the rain brings on the grass”(Lines 1-2). John R. Knott described this “place” finding from another work by Berry “The Long Legged House,” “Berry comes to appreciate what it means for him to be a ‘placed’ person, rather than the kind of displaced person he finds more typical of modern America. In these essays one discovers how to live ‘within rather than upon the life of the place,’ ‘to belong as the thrushes and the herons and the muskrats belonged, to be altogether at home here.’” (128) Berry completely embraces our evolution from nomadic peoples to an agrarian culture that allowed for society, community, and familial life. In “Stay Home” he is relating his and our destiny to watch the grass grow.

Marriage Another recurring element in Berry’s writing is the relationship of marriage, not only to your spouse, but also to nature. He believes and most of his writing substantiates that our relationship with nature should be one of a loving husband, a provider and protector. This familial commitment is shown in the second line of the poem: “In the labor of the fields longer than a man’s life.” Being that Berry came from generations of tobacco farmers, his responsibility toward these fields is greater even than his living life, it is a responsibility that will go on for generations. This is a family responsibility. Jack Hick’s “Wendell Berry’s Husband to the World” (246–247) shows this commitment and the joy it should bring to all husbands of nature. “Work is important in Berry’s world, testifying to a man’s relationship to nature; ideally, as exhausting as it is the husband’s labor is an entering into the rhythms and harmonies of natural growth.” The fields become not only your livelihood and legacy, but also your duty to protect and care for.

Death The last two stanzas in this poem refer to the peace of death. Berry has written many pieces that show the renewal of death. Not only for a person, but also for nature. Although finding a place and cultivating a relationship of marriage with nature may not be naturally human, death most certainly is. The first stanza referencing death is “I will be standing in the woods where the old trees move only with the wind and then with gravity.” This line brings back his original statement of never leaving or staying as well as living in this place until death takes him, in this instance with “gravity.” The second line is “In the stillness of the trees I am at home.” Stillness brings images of death, however, not pain; his true wish in this statement is to die among the trees, at home. In another poem by Berry, “Testament,” he gives his true feeling of life and death: “Whatever/Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger/Than flesh.”(94) Berry challenges us to begin viewing the outside world as more than weather or time of day. He challenges us to view it as something bigger than we are.

We cannot ignore the repeated lines in the poem “I am at home, Don’t come with me, You stay home too.” I believe these are a message to the reader to find their own home, their own place, marriage, and death. He tells us they are there, but it is up to us to find them.


Works Cited

Berry, Wendell. “Testament.” The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Berkeley: Counterpoint. (1998): 93–95.
Hicks, Jack. “Wendell Berry's Husband to the World: A Place on Earth.” American Literature. 51.2 (1979): 238–255.
Knott, John R. “Into the Woods with Wendell Berry.” Essays in Literature. 23.1 (1996): 124–140.


Kalynn's Notes on Robert Frost

Robert Frost: "The Gift Outright:

Written in 1936, published in 1941 Robert Frost was known for being a devout New Englander, though he was born in San Francisco. "The Gift Outright" became well known at Kennedy’s Inauguration, Frost recited the poem from memory after being unable to read what he had written for the event.

According to Anderson, Slovic, and O’Grady, Frost departs from his usual poems about environment such as mending fences, and doing general outdoor type of stuff that one would engage in, in New England. In this poem, Frost attempts to connect the people to the land saying that we surrender to the land and that we become a belonging of the land. He uses the idea that “the land was ours before it was ours” meaning that it was ordained to be ours, we just had to come over and claim it. It is almost as if we were destined to be here, (manifest destiny) and that the wars that were fought to claim this land and to be part of this land, were necessary to fulfill our destiny to be Americans.

Another way to look at this poem is as a triumphant patriotic poem. Frost himself compared the poem to the “Star Spangle Banner.” People struggle to become one with the land, but still have a connection to Europe (mentioned towards the beginning of the poem), and they need to feel patriotic towards the land that they were given/live in.


Works Cited

Anderson, Lorraine, Scott Slovic, John P. O’Grady. Literature and the Environment. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 1999.
Greiner, Donald J. Robert Frost: The Poet and His Critics. Chicago: American Library Association, 1974