Wendell Berry has died. Long live Wendell Berry.

A Eulogy for Wendell Berry

Sitting on my printer are two sheets of paper. Slightly warm. I had just finished the final edits to a letter; a letter I was then going to hand transcribe to Mr. Wendell Berry of the Membership of Port Royal, Kentucky. I was going to mail it in the morning.

I never will. Wendell Berry has died on August 31, 2026.

How do you eulogize a man you have never met but who changed your life? The amount of Wendell Berry that was in my life this morning — his poetry, prose, and essays that litter my shelves and pile up by my bed — is unchanged. And yet everything has changed.

Why did I pick up my draft of that letter today? Why did I pick it up intent on completing it today? Of all possible days. A letter that will now sit on my printer. Forever. 

Perhaps, just maybe, my soul felt another soul departing for a long journey. Perhaps, just maybe, my soul felt this soul that had changed my life slipping away and involuntarily reached out one last time (at least on this side of that far country).

To live in San Francisco and to love Wendell Berry is to be a member of a very small, very secretive club that is very bad at keeping secrets. We tell everyone, anyone who will listen and most of those who will not about our secret club. We proselytize relentlessly.

In a city built by those who pillage and run, more and more are realizing they would rather stick around and “settle, and love the life they have made and the place they have made it in.” (thank you Mr. Stegner). They want to root, but many don’t know what this looks like. 

[Wendell Berry enters stage right]

Whenever I meet a fellow Berry-ite, we get to play my favorite game: which Wendell Berry did you meet first?

Did you meet Wendell Berry, the poet? The gentle, soft-spoken, dear man who loved his herons and the woods and the creeks and the dark. A man who bid us go to the trees and be still. This Wendell Berry needed neither food nor water nor sleep. He could sit in a wood and contemplate a heron fishing for an entire century and then spend a century more pondering the ripples the heron made in the pond as it fished. 

And you could sit there with him. You could sit for as long as it took for your soul to slow down and your anxious thoughts to sleep. And then, if you dared, you could sit a bit longer to see what might happen next.

Or, perhaps you met Wendell Berry, the activist. Angry, fiery, unapologetic. Fierce, relentless, consistent, and firm. This Wendell Berry would not hesitate to smash the stocking frames if he believed the choice was between community or technological innovation. “I choose the health of the community. I would unhesitatingly destroy a machine before I would allow the machine to destroy my community.” This Wendell Berry was found in the sizzling pages of The Unsettling of America, which is so spicy it’ll burn your fingertips. 

This Wendell Berry looked out at America in all her glory and progress and power after WWII and found her wanting. He castigated the pillagers, but called them to repentance. Forever the Mad Farmer, he could always be found standing on the porch, bending his sun-kissed face toward the bend in the road while he waited, hoped, and prayed for his prodigal country to return home.

Or, and finally, did you meet Wendell Berry, historian and member of Port William? This was the Wendell Berry I first met. This is the Wendell Berry that changed my life and, in time, introduced me to the rest of the WBs. This one was sad. Having lived a long life and one full of loss, he was not, curiously enough, full of regret. Not one bit. 

He was full of sorrow as he watched his way of life and his people and his place die. It is still dying and will die yet still more. But in that sorrow, I saw joy. Not a little, but overflowing, like the rising flood waters overflowing Athey’s last harvest, a late night sing along at Jayber’s, a silent walk through The Nest Egg and of course, a little worter dranking party.

This Wendell Berry told a story of a long, slow dying. And yet The Membership still holds.

How do you sum up so rich an existence that was the many and varied lives of Wendell Berry.

You cannot. 

You can simply keep sharing his stories. As you have been doing, so do.

Dear friends, if you have not read Wendell Berry, you are impoverished. But that can change. You can be changed. Start here at the end of one of my favorite poems of his and discover the beginning of a journey that will take you places I know not, but will surely involve a heron or three.

— — —

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
The likeness of people in other places to yourself
In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them. When the people make
Dark the light within them,

— From Sabbaths, VI (lovingly referred to by the worst secret club, A Poem on Hope)

— — —

Tend to your Place. Do not let the light dim.