Kelley Brown- "A Homage to Dr. Williams"

This chapter speaks about poetry and how it can impact people’s lives. Dr. Williams touched the Wendell Berry’s, the author, life through the comfort that Berry found in his poetry. Wendell Berry wrote about how he was at a new job in New York and how he had a hard time with that but found comfort in poetry. Berry states, “I was between places, uprooted, alien in that place, deeply depressed. And then I suddenly thought of Williams –all those lovely poems that had grown out of and so heartily favored savored the life of such places as I saw—and I felt wonderfully comforted and relieved” (pg. 56). Also, he said “William’s poems have helped to satisfy me of the possibility of life wherever I have lived” (pg. 56).

Everyone is different; therefore everyone finds their strength and comfort in various things: God, other people, their job, money, poetry, nature, etc. Poetry, through the way that it flows with its’ vivid imagery and emotions, can really pull on your heart and touch you in a way that the words could not have if they were said in a different way or style. It is encouraging to see that Berry was comforted by reading something that came from someone else’s heart and passion for writing. You never know if something that you say or write will impact someone else’s life along the way, therefore never hold back what is laid on your heart because it might be exactly what someone else needs to hear.