“In Distant Neighbors, both Berry and Snyder come across as honest and open-hearted explorers. There is an overall sense that they possess a deep and questing wisdom, hard earned through land work, travel, writing, and spiritual exploration. There is no rushing, no hectoring, and no grand gestures between these two, just an ever-deepening inquiry into what makes a good life and how to live it, even in the depths of the machine age.”
– Orion Magazine
Chad Wriglesworth is a professor (at St. Jerome’s University), literary critic, book editor and writer. What most strikes me about Chad is his love of words. You will hear in our conversation how he lights up on the poetic turn of phrase, or a word that is precise enough to communicate exactly what is intended. Chad compiled and edited the letters for Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. This book is riveting and I begged it not to end. The tone, tenor and rhythm of the letters are the manifestations from the lives of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. If you are a fan of this podcast, you are no stranger to hearing about Wendell Berry; Kentucky agrarian, poet, novelist, essayist, to name just a few of his attributes. Gary Snyder is also a man of letters from the same generation and equally as counter-culture but from another slant. Snyder is a poet, Zen Buddhist, essayist and leans into a more hunter-gatherer philosophical stance.
Both Berry and Snyder have shaped the direction of my contemplative approach to not knowing, encouraging the way of ignorance (when ignorance is properly defined) and the practice of the wild. Chad Wriglesworth distills the essence of the selected letters so well in this conversation; he’s attentive, useful, poetic, and relishes the conviviality of the conversation.
To learn more about Chad’s work, follow this link.
Subscribe to Contemplify via iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean, Overcast or Google Play
EPISODE SHOW NOTES
Resources by Chad Wriglesworth
- Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder
- We Are Still Near the Beginning: A Conversation with Wendell Berry
Resources Mentioned
- The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
- Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder
- ‘I Went into the Maverick Bar’ by Gary Snyder
- Sabbath Poems by Wendell Berry
- Myths & Texts by Gary Snyder
- Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder at the Festival of Faiths
- Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- ‘A Poem for My Daughter’ by Teddy Macker
- The Berry Center
People
- Wendell Berry
- Gary Snyder
- Jane Kenyon
- Alice Mattison
- Joyce Peseroff
- Donald Hall
- Lucille Clifton
- William Stafford
- Jack Shoemaker
- Marilynne Robinson
- Teddy Macker
- Robert Haas
- Jack Shoemaker
- Bobbie Ann Mason
- Gurney Norman
- Ed McClanahan
- Mary Berry
- August Wilson
- Cormac McCarthy
- Margaret Eden
- Festival of Faiths
Drink Pairing
- Boilermaker, Kentucky Bourbon
Highlights
- Why do reading letters of others capture our imagination so?
- Can you speak to some of the aliveness and guilelessness in Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry’s communication?
- The kindred spirit between Snyder and Berry
- Contemplation and humanism
- Attentiveness to their particular landscape
- What is the usefulness of poetry?
- What is the history of their correspondence?
- How did Distant Neighbors come together?
- The playfulness and depth of friendships between Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry
- Has their correspondence inspired your own letter writing habits?
- Letter-writing as a beautiful art
- Can you share more about your course at Regent College on ‘Grace and Forgiveness is Drama’?
- If you were going to pair this conversation with a drink, what drink would it be?
i have read this book completely, twice. after the first time, i felt disappointed, as if something has been deliberately edited out, removed.
as if the editor had deliberately created an inconsistent vacuum: there is so much more behind what has been presented here. so i read it again. my opinion did not change. perhaps my expectations regarding literary works of this nature need to be adjusted. is it just me? i have read most of g. snyder’s published work, about half of w. berry’s. the above mentioned publication , as published, still disappoints when compared to their other works. this book remains on the top of the pile of books on my reading table. parts are still being re-read. under ordinary circumstance, i do not give up easily, but after writing this comment, i realize that it is time to put this book aside and move on. i appreciate contacts with the berry center. thanks for listening.