Wendell Berry, the poet of place and placedness, Kentucky’s native son, died August 31 at the age of 92.

“I can’t believe it,” I told my brother Phillip, who called from Kentucky to share the news. “I was just thinking about him.” Phillip said he had just been thinking about him, too.

I imagine many people felt that way. Once you knew Wendell Berry and his work you thought about him often. He was an American original.

Berry taught Phillip freshman English at the University of Kentucky. “I don’t think he much liked my writing,” Phillip said.

I never studied with Berry. But I did study his writing. In fact, just last week I was thumbing through one of this books, Home Economics. And after hearing of his death I re-read one of my favorite Berry essays, “A Native Hill.”

As I begin the thesis-writing year of my academic program, I’m turning once again to Berry. He, more than most contemporary writers, articulated the delicate but indelible bonds between people and place, and especially, between writers and place. Rest in peace, Wendell Berry.