I excerpted the above from the Lannan Foundation’s November 10, 1999 Wendell Berry reading:

Wendell Berry is a poet, essayist, and novelist, who has been called the “prophet of rural America.” Mr. Berry, who pursues what he calls “an ethic and way of life based upon devotion to a place and devotion to a land,” lives and works on his farm in Port Royal, Kentucky. He has published more than 30 books, including The Wheel, Sabbaths, and Openings (poetry); The Wild Birds, Watch with Me, and Remembering (fiction); and Another Turn of the Crank, What Are People For?, and The Unsettling of America (nonfiction). He received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction in 1989.