Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader’s Guide by J. Matthew Bonzo, Michael R. Stevens (review)

498 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE breasts [were) sliced and served" while "St. Lucy's mild eyes [fell) upon the dish:' Referring to their martyred flesh, she playfully casts them as "girls all aglow with one desire / painted bright in hues ofred and blue:' As the above, and many other examples demonstrate, O'Donnell's poems are the product of wit as well as wisdom. In "Druscilla Dance;' Salome's sinfully venal sister's "painted toes strapped into her sandal met the magma first:' In "Glitter makes everythingbetter [sic);' she likens the temptation in Genesis to a woman entranced by the devil's bling. "Prometheus discovered fire / Eve discovered glitter / Bright baubles on the tree / the diamond in the serpent's eye:' In a less pungent vein, O'Donnell shares an easy friendship with Dante as she prepares dinner ("Dante in the Kitchen"). As she busies herselfwith teapots, Coca Cola cans, frozen meat, lighting a broiler, and adjusting her apron, O'Donnell injects gory vignettes from The Inferno-e.g., "Simoniacs ... boiling in pitch" or "Ugolino graws on the head of Ruggieri"-and concludes: "Our worlds do not mesh / Mine and Dante's / Anywhere better than here:' Two decades earlier, playwright Adrienne Kennedy wrote about a similar literary friendship in She Talks to Beethoven. But what makes O'Donnell's MovingHouseso surprisingly cohesive is that her style accommodates a variety ofgenres, or variations of a genre, be they eulogies, lyrics, meditations, or satires. No less to her credit, MovingHouseproves that O'Donnell is a poet of careful pitch as well as sense. Her poems cry to be read aloud as she orchestrates them with alliteration and assonance. When her father tries to fix a rebellious furnace, "We'd hear the turn of the handle, the chunk / and swing of the metal door unhinged :' As the "Blues Man" boyfriend drinks Scotch, the "ice would swish and ring / against the glasses:' Hearing her sons play baseball, O'Donnell captures the sound of leather against leather in these lines: "the slap of the ball/in the glove'S deep pocket:' Standing on "cliffs / above the boulder-smashing sea" in "Inis Mor," O'Donnell discovers "Words flung against the wind / the wind flung back;' another image that verbally and visually evokes the spiritual and the physical forces at work in her poems. There are many rooms in O'Donnell's MovingHouse, and I congratulate her on taking us on a virtual tour oftheir soundly constructed architecture. Philip C. Kolin University of SouthernMississippi Wendell Berry and the Cultivation ofLife:A Reader's Guide. By J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-58743-1951 . Pp. 206. $22.00. In nearly fifty years ofwriting, Wendell Berry has produced a body of thought that defies easy summation, making Bonzo and Stevens' efforts to provide an over- BOOK REVIEWS 499 view of Berry's vision a daunting task. What makes their project even bolder is that while Berry positions himself as a marginal Christian outside any institutional church, this book attempts to interpret Berry's thought from an evangelical and particularly Reformed perspective. Bonzo and Stevens do not intend, then, to provide a scholarly analysis of Berry's writing but rather to make his contrarian thought understandable to an evangelicalaudience and to encourage them to apply his insights in order to bring healing to the diseased culture in which they live. By focusing on the theme of health, this book holds together remarkably well given its scope, as the authors place Berry within the broader cultural conversation, outline his critique of modernity and his prescription for healing, and explore this theme in his fiction. In the final two chapters, which are perhaps the most interesting, the authors provocatively extend Berry's ideas and suggest ways to mend the two institutions Berry has criticized most vehemently-the church and the university. The book's attempt to reach an evangelical audience is both its major strength and a weakness. While many Christians already read Berry, Bonzo and Stevens provide an important service in making his writing more accessible to those who might be put offby Berry's environmentalism or apparent nostalgia for an agrarian way...