A young writer whose poem November Twenty Six, Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three, with drawings by Ben Shahn published in the spring of 1964, was an immediate best seller, offers here a particularly satisfying first book of poetry characterized by quiet strength and a serenity based on a compassionate understanding of the human condition. A countryman born and reared, Wendell Berry is predominantly a pastoral poet. He writes about the elemental things, life and death and love, turning constantly to the natural world for his imagery, he writes of snow and rain and the waters of the earth, of birds and blossoming tees, of country sounds and the qualities of light: “The river runs to noon forever. The clear light rings with bees.” Particularly in a number of extended poems and poem sequences, the mood is reflective, musing, elegiac. But there is humor, too, and even an occasional satiric thrust or flash of anger. Subtlety lies beneath an immediate, forthright simplicity, an apparent effortlessness may initially conceal the fact that this is highly disciplined writing. Instantly appealing as they are, Wendell Berry’s poems gain added stature as the reader comes to know them better and perceive fully their beauty and their unobtrusive power.