{"id":2726,"date":"2009-04-06T11:13:34","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T11:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html"},"modified":"2009-04-06T11:13:34","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T11:13:34","slug":"nationsl-poetry-month-wendell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html","title":{"rendered":"National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry&#8217;s &#8216;Wild Blessings&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Beliefnet has begun its celebration of National Poetry Month and while I love poetry, in trying to think of a poet to write about for Idol Chatter, I came <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/crunchycon\/2008\/04\/nyc-wendell-berry-concert.html\" target=\"_blank\">upon a favorite  of Crunchy Cons<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/brtom.typepad.com\/wberry\/\" target=\"_blank\">egrarian philosopher\/minister Wendell Berry<\/a>.I became curious about Berry&#8217;s life and work while planning a trip to Louisville and last week I was able to catch a stage production of Berry&#8217;s poetry as produced by the acclaimed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.actorstheatre.org\/play_wendellberry.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Actor&#8217;s Theatre of Louisville<\/a>. The play &#8220;Wild Blessings&#8221; combines music brought to life by four actors as part of a recreation of more than 30 of Berry&#8217;s poems. The production is getting rave reviews and, rumor has it, may tour regionally in the future.<!--more-->This poem wasn&#8217;t featured in the show but I think it is my favorite of his work.  For me, it is a sharp portrait of the spiritual life and the mystery that goes with it. <strong>The Real Work by Wendell Berry<\/strong>It may be that when we no longer know what to dowe have come our real work,and that when we no longer know which way to gowe have come to our real journey.The mind that is not baffled is not employed.The impeded stream is the one that sings.And if you would like to hear Wendell Berry read from a collection of poems reflecting on the Sabbath, watch the clip below.<object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/mJN7zb0oCvc&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/mJN7zb0oCvc&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beliefnet has begun its celebration of National Poetry Month and while I love poetry, in trying to think of a poet to write about for Idol Chatter, I came upon a favorite of Crunchy Cons, the egrarian philosopher\/minister Wendell Berry.I became curious about Berry&#8217;s life and work while planning a trip to Louisville and last&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry&#039;s &#039;Wild Blessings&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry&#039;s &#039;Wild Blessings&#039;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Beliefnet has begun its celebration of National Poetry Month and while I love poetry, in trying to think of a poet to write about for Idol Chatter, I came upon a favorite of Crunchy Cons, the egrarian philosopher\/minister Wendell Berry.I became curious about Berry&#8217;s life and work while planning a trip to Louisville and last&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-06T11:13:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kris Rasmussen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry's 'Wild Blessings'","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry's 'Wild Blessings'","og_description":"Beliefnet has begun its celebration of National Poetry Month and while I love poetry, in trying to think of a poet to write about for Idol Chatter, I came upon a favorite of Crunchy Cons, the egrarian philosopher\/minister Wendell Berry.I became curious about Berry&#8217;s life and work while planning a trip to Louisville and last&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2009-04-06T11:13:34+00:00","author":"Kris Rasmussen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html","name":"National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry's 'Wild Blessings'","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-06T11:13:34+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-06T11:13:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/667195b00ac2263e0f6700056170bbf8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/nationsl-poetry-month-wendell.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry&#8217;s &#8216;Wild Blessings&#8217;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/667195b00ac2263e0f6700056170bbf8","name":"Kris Rasmussen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e7\/2e7278d93dd11c6aad2c82da37f0d657x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e7\/2e7278d93dd11c6aad2c82da37f0d657x96.jpg","caption":"Kris Rasmussen"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/krasmussen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}