The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

Given: New Poems. Wind Publications 2005. 2004.

He is also an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers a recipient of The National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is a prolific author of novels short stories poems and essays. Wendell Berry (born August 5 1934) is an American man of letters academic cultural and economic critic and farmer.