The color and shadings of the work of poets come out of the life they choose to support their art, financially and spiritually. There are city poets and country poets, academic hacks and bohemians, politicians and recluses. Wendell Berry happens to be a farmer from Kentucky. His poetry, not unexpectedly, often returns to the study of the earth, the fields, the hills. His eighth collection [The Wheel] has a particular theme, however: the cycle called the Wheel of Life. Ordered in six sections, Berry's Wheel begins at the end, with two poems about the death of old friends, and graduates to the promise of new life in the marriages of his children. This drama takes place partly in the mind of the poet and is partly set in the landscape of his home. There is a great deal of intelligent feeling in Berry's work, with the same undercurrent...