{"id":36238,"date":"2026-09-07T17:31:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=36238"},"modified":"2026-09-07T17:31:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:31:36","slug":"wendell-berry-september-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=36238","title":{"rendered":"Wendell Berry, September 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On September 2, I posted Wendell Berry’s poem with that title on social media, moved that he had just missed the anniversary of the day when, according to the poem, he accepted “decline” and recognized that he would dissolve into “sleep.” The original appeared in Poetry<\/em> magazine, May 1970. Berry died on August 31 of this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have since spend a bit more time with the poem, and I will offer a few notes in the hope that they may encourage you to give it additional attention. (Berry always invited us to attend.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is written in iambic pentameter. There are rhymes: “hawks” and “stalks” get the poem going, and later, “knew” rhymes with “grew”; “as in” with “garden”; and–more loosely–“darkening” with “fading.” I hear the last word of the poem, “flight,” as a rhyme of “light,” although that word came at a caesura in line 10. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither the rhythm nor the rhyme scheme is perfectly regular. Nor are rows of sunflowers. But the regularity is sufficient to connect this poem to the tradition of rhymed English iambic pentameter that Chaucer began in the 14th Century. Running to twelve lines, it can be read as variant of a sonnet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early September would likely be hot in a place like Kentucky. The poem is set in the evening, when nighthawks hunt for insects, and the “landscapes of the sky” are fading at dusk. These features connect “September 2” to a long tradition of rustic elegy. As one of countless examples, Virgil’s second “Eclogue”:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shadows lengthen as the sun goes low;
Cool breezes now the raging heats remove;
Ah! cruel heaven, that made no cure for love!
I wish for balmy sleep, but wish in vain ...
           (translated by John Dryden, 1697)<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The nighthawks, sunflowers, and garden pull powerfully upward, as suggested by the words “rose,” “tall,” and “straining to the light.” The nighthawks are even “summoned” up. But the final two lines work like the “turn” or concluding couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet. They suddenly describe the narrator’s downward motion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berry was, famously, an actual farmer. But the garden in this poem is in his mind. Acceptance grows in his garden, not planned or planted there but naturally arising. He has worked in his mental garden; now he is ready to sleep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like most poems, this one should be read as fiction. But it is hard to ignore the fact that Berry had 56 years ahead of him to describe restraint and acceptance after he wrote these lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last phrase is hard: “my leaves all dissolved in flight.” It echoes the sentence that likens the nighthawks to rags tossed in the sky. The birds rise into sight, while the narrator’s leaves dissolve, flying, out of view. But what are they–him? Are they about to fly from their stems when autumn comes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
 If his leaves are his writings, I do not think they will soon dissolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
See also: read slowly, read aloud<\/a>; notes on Auden\u2019s September 1, 1939<\/a>; and the humanities for specialists and for everyone<\/a> (on attention).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On September 2, I posted Wendell Berry’s poem with that title on social media, moved that he had just missed the anniversary of the day when, according to the poem, he accepted “decline” and recognized that he would dissolve into “sleep.” The original appeared in Poetry magazine, May 1970. Berry died on August 31 of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-notes-on-poems","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36238"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36252,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36238\/revisions\/36252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}