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Wendell Berry, the Kentucky-born author and agrarian whose poems, stories, novels and essays celebrated the farming communities of his native state and warned of the excesses and misjudgments of an industrial, commercialized society, has died aged 92.<\/p>\n
His daughter, Mary Berry, confirmed on Monday that he died in his home in Port Royal, Kentucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not enough I could say about him to do him justice,\u201d she told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n Berry was a prolific writer who published more than 40 books, including the novels Nathan Coulter and A Place on Earth, the short story collection Stand By Me<\/a> and the anthology A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997.<\/p>\n His legacy extended well beyond Kentucky: Michael Pollan, author of such bestsellers as The Omnivore\u2019s Dilemma, would say his life was changed by Berry\u2019s declaration that \u201cEating is an agricultural act.\u201d The chef and food activist Alice Waters cited him as a favorite author and wrote an introduction to Berry\u2019s 1989 essay The Pleasures of Eating.<\/p>\n Few authors were more tied to their home than Berry, an intellectual and spiritual heir to Henry David Thoreau and such southern agrarians as Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom. In prose and poetry that mirrored the uncluttered and deeply felt life he advocated, Berry challenged modern assumptions about prosperity and happiness and renewed the mysteries of birth, love, work and death. He had learned from his own history: Berry was born and raised in a farming town during the Great Depression and watched its seemingly immortal ties unravel by his teens.<\/p>\n