Given: Poems

This rich and varied new collection is cause for celebration. For the past 25 years award-winning writer Wendell Berry has been at work on "The Sabbath Poems," resulting from his Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation. Poems from the past eight years of these walks are included in Given. Also featured is "Sonata at Payne Hollow," a play in verse that is a startling evocation of the lives of the painters Harlan and Anna Hubbard. The other half of this collection contains shorter occasional pieces, from political poems to folk sayings, love poems to celebrations. Given is Berry's first book of new poems in 10 years.