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

One stanza of eleven lines constitutes Wendell Berry’s poem The Peace of Wild Things. For its brief duration, the poem maintains neither a constant meter nor rhyme scheme. Instead, Berry uses strong imagery such as the “still water” and “the day-blind stars” as well as depictions of “the wood drake” and “great heron” to demonstrate his idea of “the grace of the world.” Additionally, multiple sentences use repetition of the world “I,” which gives the poem a more personal feel. This technique along with the poem’s images helps to the reader relate to the anxiety causing the narrator of the poem to seek “peace” in the beauty of the wild. In my view, The Peace of Wild Things suggests that, in order to break free from my stress and worries, I must

The fact that we wakes “at the least of sound” relays the magnitude of his fears. Like many other teenagers, I have experienced heavy stress over a wide variety of issues although I have not encountered insomnia. When the narrator reveals his concerns about “[his] life and [his] children’s lives,” I can empathize with those feelings due to my stress over my impending decisions about college. My major decisions over the next eight months will not only have an impact on my life but also my future wife, so the anxiety of making a miscalculation or mistake in deciding has slowly grown on my over the last few weeks. Later in the poem, the narrator also implies that, at times, he “taxes” himself with “forethought of grief,” which reminds me of something that I once heard or read about stress. Stress was described as the feeling or expectation when one thinks that he will not be able to accomplish something in a certain amount of time. This definition has remained in the back of my mind because it essentially argued that stress was only a person’s fears of failing of a task at hand; it had nothing to do with the person’s actual ability to complete the task. When I stress about completing weekly assignments, encountering future events, or simply being able to make it school on time, sometimes I have to take a step back and recognize that my worries are unjustified. Hence, I admire Berry’s observations