Creation

The poem that follows and this short note of remembrance are “grace notes.” They are just the slightest sounds offered in the midst of the larger, fuller, more ringing memorials to Wendell Erdman Berry, who passed away on August 31, 2026, at the age of 92. Berry, as described by those who knew and loved him most dearly—his family and local community—was simply “a writer and farmer of Port Royal, Henry County, Kentucky.” This was the uncomplicated essence of Wendell Berry, although he was also a cultural critic, an advocate for attending carefully, and with affection, to one’s place in the natural, familial, and economic world.