Port William (Wendell Berry)
Port William, Kentucky is a fictional rural town found in each of the novels and short stories and some of the poems of Wendell Berry. The larger region, set along the western bank of the Kentucky River, consists of Port William proper and several outlying farms and settlements around the also-fictional Dawe's Landing, Squire's Landing, Goforth, and Cotman Ridge. The town is set about "twelve miles or better" south of the fictional town of Hargrave and the Ohio River. It is generally acknowledged that Port William is a fiction inspired by Berry's  own hometown of Port Royal, Kentucky—and that Hargrave is the fictional form of Carrollton, Kentucky, a larger town located at the confluence of the Kentucky and Ohio rivers. Carrollton itself was originally known as Port William. The Port William Stories. Each of Berry's fictional works is set in and around Port William. There are to date eight novels, fifty-five short stories, a verse drama, and fifteen poems that touch on the people and life of the place. The chronology of the tales stretches from the United States Civil War to 2017. Within these stories a reader encounters  both momentous and ordinary events in the lives of the Beechum, Feltner, Coulter, and Catlett families, individuals of which, along with others, make up the Port William membership. In his essay "Imagination in Place," Berry comments on his intentions for Port William: "I have made the imagined place of Port William, its neighborhood and membership, in an attempt to honor the actual place where I have lived. By means of the imagined place, over the last fifty years, I have learned to see my native landscape and neighborhood as a place unique in the world, a work of God, possessed  of an inherent sanctity that mocks any human valuation that can be put upon it." The Port William Membership. "The Membership" is the term by which Berry and his characters convey the bonds of a community within its given geographical location. The "membership" consists of any person who recognizes his or her place among—and responsibility for the well-being of—the land, animals, and people of the place. In "The Wild Birds," the character Burley Coulter explains what he means by 'membership,' This concept is drawn from St. Paul's understanding, "For as the body is one and has  many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." (1 Corinthians 12.12) Concerning Burley's "Everything," Berry has said that it may be that "Burley improved on St. Paul … by telling a more comprehensive truth." Narrative Chronology. The stories and novels of Port William, are listed here according to the order in which the events of the stories occur (narrative chronology). Each is followed by the collection in which it may be found. To that point, each of the short stories from "The Girl in the Window" to "Not a  Tear" are collected in "Wendell Berry: Port William Novels & Stories, The Civil War to World War II" with the exceptions of "A Clearing" and "Don't Send a Boy to Do a Man's Work" (1891). Uncertain Chronology