The Big Short shows the big picture of how America’s financial system truly operates—and how more crises are...
Our circulation department and customer service can help you with your subscription account and questions.
- Status of Subscription
- Enter Your Change of Address
- Let Us Know If You’ve Missed An Issue
- Ask Us a Question
- Pay your invoice
- Renew Your Own Subscription
- Give a Gift Subscription
- Renew your gift subscriptions
- Buy back issues
Donate
Support The Progressive
Contact Us Online
Contact the Staff Online
Contact Us Offline
Call toll-free: 1-800-827-0555
Call: (608) 257-4626
Fax: (608) 257-3373
Write:
The Progressive Circulation Department
409 E. Main Street
Madison, WI 53703
Subscription orders, changes of address, and queries should be directed to:
The Progressive
PO Box 392
Oregon IL 61061
(Payment should be made to The Progressive)
More
- Subscribe
- Featured Video
- Recent Stories
- Recent Comments
- Poetry
There are fundamental differences between the tests I give my students and the tests mandated by the federal...
"I'm a man who has been a political activist, who has a political consciousness, and who can write poetry."
By Wendell Berry
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion—put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer, and environmentalist in Kentucky. This poem, first published in 1973, is reprinted by permission of the author and appears in his “New Collected Poems” (Counterpoint).
Comments
Hi, when I saw my July/August
I just commented on the new
Add new comment