Water at the Roots

This is both a collection of poems and a biography of Philip Britts, a farmer, who was away ahead of his time and he spoke about it.
There's this phrase that summed up my reading experience and in part the purpose of the book "One of the great tragedies of the modern world is the complete divorce of the city dwellers from nature and the land..."
Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.

This beautifully organized book shares the poems, journal entries, insights, and observations of the poet Philip Britts, a passionate proponent of non-violence, farmer, and verse-maker. The majority of readers will be coming to Britts's poetry for the first time, and to this end the editors have structured the book as a kind of long feature profile. Organized into five sections, "Wilderness," "Ploughing," "Planting," "Cultivating," and "Harvesting," the book takes readers with Britts on a journey from war-torn England to Paraguay where the poet learns to cope with a stringent and punishing environment in a pacifist community.

The story itself is extraordinary, and Britts's message of egalitarianism and universal brotherhood, coupled in his conviction that man's natural environment to experience God is on the land, could not be timelier. Transcendental in his beliefs, in its best mode Britts's poems exhibit something of the 19th century American movement:

"But who can show strong men, as these,
The things that will abide,
The one Adventure, one great Quest
From which there is no pause nor rest
When once the search is tried;
Where those who search and struggle
and, daring, drink the wells of Death,
And find the water sweet?
There is but one Adventure,
The seeking for the Truth,
One prize for those who find it--
Everlasting Youth."

His collection will entrance and bring joy to nature-lovers and poetry-lovers alike.

This book is both biography and life’s work. Instead of just reading a collection of poetry or prose, readers get to see Britts’ work in the context of a life lived.