Sayings and Doings and an Eastward Look

Published in 1990 by Gnomon Press This volume combines two small books of poetry by Wendell Berry, both with expanded texts. In Sayings and Doings the inner lives of the country people Berry knows so well surface in sayings, stories, reminiscences, and a number of jocular dialogues. Many are expressions we hear and often mean to remember but, when we start to retell them, find that we have forgotten the exact wording, without which they lose their effectiveness. Here the poet remembers well. One can hear as one reads, and the rural speech has been whittled so that not a syllable is wasted. The condensed nature of Sayings and Doings is mirrored in the Asian influence of An Eastward Look, which includes haiku, the journal-like sequence "A Long Journey and a Small Notebook," and the masterful "Chinese Painting Poems." For those familiar with many other collections of Berry's poems, this volume will acquaint them with other facets of his work, until now too little known.