Wendell Berry's Poem 'The Peace Of Wild Things'

In Wendell Berry’s 1968 poem “The Peace of Wild Things” the speaker finds a solution to the anxieties he feels during a sleepless night by going outside to a quiet, peaceful place in nature, near a body of water. In the presence of wildlife, water, and stars, he feels restored to tranquility, his troubles dissolves in the great peace he experiences in nature. He shows a balance between nature and humans and shows how nature can play a vital role in healing our humanly spirts and souls.

In “The Peace of Wild Things” The poet conveys an interpretation of what he likes to do when he feels his anxiety is about to kick in and finds a way to keep calm with nature. He describes having a fear for the world and what it may become for his children. He says, “When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be.” Perhaps his worries may be war, economics, and family issues but the only thing that seems to keep him in peace is nature. The poet makes it clear how deep this worry in his mind is, since he will wake up at

night if there is even the slightest of sounds and then his worries will start again. The poet seems to be stressed and anxious.
When life events and objects seem to worry him, nature frees his mind and body.

In lines 10-12 Berry says, “And I feel above me the day-blind stars, waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” In these three stanzas, he describes a feeling of freedom and rest by the stars that light up the sky. The poet explains about how getting out into the natural world cures him of the agitation and worry that he had been experiencing as he lays awake at home. He feels at peace now, and this is because he can sense and share in the way nature and its creatures live. There is peacefulness in nature because the animal kingdoms do not, unlike humans, have the capacity to worry about the future. And in fact, are emotionless and worry free. The author describes as nature being his stress reliever and something he can always lean on at the end of the

day.
My interpretation of this poem leads me to believe the poet is trying to interpret a relationship between human and nature and compare them. He focuses on his anxiety’s and describes how nature has no worries like he does and that’s why at the end of the day nature is his stress reliever because he describes nature as being calm and having no worries.
In this era human life may have been chaotic and dangerous. People were unable to live at peace with one another, and the news always seems to be bad. During this time when the poem was published in 1968 there where many conflicts in the world. One of the main conflicts that could have possibly been a vital purpose the author was trying to get across would have been the conflict the United States had with Vietnam during this era, war was at its peak. In this year, Senator Robert Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated. This could’ve been a cause of his worries and that’s why he was so worried for his children lives that could’ve been put at risk because of this dangerous and chaotic world.
Works cited: The Peace of Wild Things: Berry, Wendell. "The Peace of Wild Things." On Being, KTPP, https://onbeing.org/blog/wendell-berry-the-peace-of-wild-things. Accessed: 12 September 2017.