Window Poems

Since 1979, Wendell Berry has taken a walk almost every Sunday. Often on these walks of meditation and reflection, he finds himself making notes for poems. Some years he has accomplished as many as fifteen or twenty poems from those walks, while in other years only half a dozen. The resultant work has been published in collections of Sabbath Poems, a precursor to which was The Window Poems.

The Window Poems were composed while Berry looked out of the multi-paned window of his writing studio, “The Long-Legged House.” The house is near the renovated farmhouse where Berry and his wife raised their children and continue to live. These poems contemplate Berry's personal life as much as they ponder the seasons he witnesses through the window. This beautiful book was first designed, composed, and printed on a Washington handpress by Bob Barris, at the Press on Scroll Road, with wood engravings by Wesley Bates. Including an introduction by James Baker Hall, this early sequence of poems signals and celebrates the groundwork of Berry's life.