Flight from Babel
Standing by Words
by Wendell Berry
Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005
(213 pages, $15.00, paperback)
reviewed by Robert Grano
In Standing by Words, first published in 1983 but out of print for over 15 years, Wendell Berry examines the state of language in our culture, finding it wanting in many ways and in many areas. The book contains four short essays on language, marriage, modern poetry, and the relationship between land and community, as well as one collection of “notes” and one long essay, “Poetry and Place,” which takes up almost half of the book.
Accounting Language
The title essay makes the case that languag . . .
