Ayrin Hnosko of the internet asks, “I’m a big fan. Currently listening to “The Unsettling of America”. I do have a question, if I may be so bold. I want to write and create a podcast but the fear of “who the hell cares what I have to say” is suffocating. Do you have some epic words of wisdom for how to move past this wall of fear to create, what I deeply feel, is my soul’s calling?”
Ayrin, thank you kindly for this very good question. I’ll reiterate right off the bat that I would strongly prefer you all a) leave me questions, and b) tell me where you’re from, so I don’t have to imagine you disembodied, simply floating in some homogenized “Cloud” of Internet.
Here is where you can get my audio version of The Unsettling of America, and here is The World-Ending Fire, but for all other things Wendell Berry and Berry-adjacent, the properly redoubtable headquarters is The Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky.
Here is the poem of his (one of a great many) I particularly enjoy:
A Warning to My Readers:
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
Thank you all for your mulish support.
Love,
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Epic Words of Wisdumb