Sayings & Doings is for the most part an anthology of short epigrams heard in conversation in the country. In a short prefatory note Berry likens these poems to the "found objects" of the sculptors but insists that the verse form in which these epigrams appear is necessary because "it makes clear that memorable speech is measured speech."…

Some, if not all, of these epigrams come close to the jokes of the "Hee-Haw" television program: the comparison is cruel and wrong but often hard to fend off. For example,

                  We have to eat
                  early at our house.
                  Ain't got enough to eat
                  to feed a hungry man.

Our great southern prose writers—Faulkner, O'Connor, Welty—have worked such phrases into moments of great beauty and they have not sacrificed "measured speech." But standing by themselves such phrases remind us of the vulgar exploitation of the popular southern idiom in...