Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #159632 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-04
• Released on: 2004-11-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 200 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781931082693
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From The Washington Post
John Berryman (1914-72) has one of the most idiosyncratic voices in American poetry. That voice, which is everywhere on display in a new Selected Poems, capably edited by Kevin Young, is by turns quirky and whimsical, brilliantly learned and painfully mannered, smart-alecky, anguished. Berryman combined a passionate, disruptive syntax with an irreverent blend of highbrow and lowbrow dictions -- part Shakespeare, part minstrel show, part baby talk. Who could have predicted such a salty, ostentatious and exaggerated comic style -- or known that it would come to seem so intensely literary and inevitably American? Imagine Emily Dickinson crossed with Bessie Smith and Groucho Marx. The results, to use one of Berryman's favorite words, are "delicious."

No significant American poet is funnier, though the comedy is nervous and limned with sadness. ("Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.") When I was in school my friends and I followed the antic doings of the ironic hero of The Dream Songs -- huffy, unappeasable Henry ("an old Pussycat," "a human American man") -- the way popular culture addicts followed the soaps, episode by episode. We were amazed by the way that "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet" created an imaginary dialogue between two poets across the centuries. Who else would have turned to a Puritan writer he was summoning out of the past and declared, "I want to take you for my lover"? We didn't yet recognize the dark truth of Berryman's underlying subject, which was, as he said, "the almost insuperable difficulty of writing high verse in a land that cared and cares so little for it."

We were stunned, too, by Berryman's Sonnets, which showed the poet under obsessive emotional pressure "crumpling a syntax with a sudden need." The critics pasted Love & Fame and Delusions, etc., but we regaled one another with "It is supernal what a youth can take" and "All the black same I dance my blue head off." We applauded when he fought back with "Defensio in Extremis":

I said: Mighty men have encamped against me,
and they have questioned not only the skill of my defences
but my sincerity.
Now, Father, let them have it.

In his last books Berryman spoke with unadorned directness and a certain exhibitionist glee in his wayward past. He wrote religious poems, such as "Eleven Addresses to the Lord" and "Opus Dei," in which he put himself "under new management" by embracing a "God of rescue." One felt him standing, guilt-ridden and amazed, before the eternal.

He also wrote needy, grief-stricken poems that one still returns to late at night. Such lyrics as "He Resigns," "Henry by Night," and "Henry's Understanding" have a terrifying clarity and simplicity. They have a dark vulnerability and honesty, a wounded splendor.

Henry's Understanding

He was reading late, at Richard's, down in Maine,
aged 32? Richard & Helen long in bed,
my good wife long in bed.
All I had to do was strip & get into my bed,
putting the marker in the book, & sleep,
& wake to a hot breakfast.
Off the coast was an island, P'tit Manaan,
the bluff from Richard's lawn was almost sheer.
A chill at four o'clock.
It only takes a few minutes to make a man.
A concentration upon now & here.
Suddenly, unlike Bach,
& horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me
that one night, instead of warm pajamas,
I'd take off all my clothes
& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff
into the terrible water & walk forever
under it out toward the island.

By Edward Hirsch
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Well-selected poems of an uneven poet.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the editor's introduction and these poems of a Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet. They are well selected and represent the entire span of Berryman's work unlike some other collections that lack some of the author's books. My favorite poems are his early poems up to his famous "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet" and his late poems that have lost much of his egotism and drip with regret, humility, and hope of a better life.

A knowledge of Berryman's life is requisite to understand most of his poetry. His father committed suicide when the author was just a boy. Berryman was promptly adopted, given a new last name - Berryman, and sent to a boarding school by his mother and new stepfather - the man with whom his mother was having an affair at the time of his father's suicide. Berryman himself committed suicide at age 57 after years of problems from divorce to alcholism. The editor, Kevin Young, gives a great overview of Berryman's life and allows the reader of these poems the knowledge necessary to enjoy them fully. I think a reader would be lost much of the time without the introduction, so I definitely recommend this particular edition.

His early poems are about the struggle for adulthood. Here is a representative excerpt.
"He is learning, well behind his deperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up"

The influence of Auden, Yeats, Eliot and others are evident. Take these lines:
"The time is coming near
When none shall have books or music, none his dear,
And only a fool will speak aloud his mind.
History is approaching a speechless end"
You could easily place these lines in the middle of Yeats' Second Coming.

There is an undeniable religiosity in Berryman's work from the earliest to the latest poems. Lines like "Finish, Lord, in me this work thou hast begun" are as autobiographical as they are biographical. In one of his last poems he notes, "I do not understand; but I believe".

His middle poems are wildly unpredictable and unconventional. Some are pithy, others whimsical, and still others offensive. Who can not be charmed by a poet who notes, "Life, friends, is boring."

All in all, a great American poet, in a great collection with a great foreword and editor. Four stars.

Will serve to introduce a whole new generation to his work
John Berryman: Selected Poems is the latest addition to the outstanding "American Poets Project" series from The Library of America. Deftly edited for the reader by poet and essayist Kevin Young, this is the the showcase collection of poetry by the Pulitzer Prize winning John Berryman and will aptly serve to introduce a whole new generation to his work that ranges from wrenching religious poems to verse that is characterized with a mesmerizing diction. King David Dances: Aware to the dry throat of the wide hell in the world,/O trampling empires, and mine one of them,/and mine one gross desire against His sight,/slaughter devising there,/some good behind, ambiguous ahead,/revolted sons, a pierced son, bound to bear,/mid hypocrites amongst idolaters,/mockt in abysm by one shallow wife,/with the ponder both of priesthood & of State/heavy upon me, yea,/all the black same I dance my blue head off! Also very highly recommended as newly released titles in of the "American Poets Project" series are William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems (1931082-715, $20.00) and Amy Lowell: Selected Poems (1931082707, $20.00).

Blues for Mr. Bones
One of the most honest and at the same time unique voices in late 20th century poetry. (Is this also a comment about late 20th century poetry?) The Dream Songs will grow on you after the first re-reading, and after the second you find yourself useless for any other brand of verse. (In this sense, Berryman does to modern American verse what Pynchon does to American fiction, and there are other similarities I think, to the credit of both.)

This volume, in addition, collects the lesser known works of Berryman, many of which may be almost as memorable as the songs of his renown. In particular, the precursor Homage for Mistress Bradstreet - part character sketch, part lyrical tribute, part dreamscape blending memory, history, and disillusion at the very birth of a nation - and the religious poetry of Berryman's last years - a peculiar religion that blends humility, wit, and fragile bones - shed a soft light on the poet's middle masterpiece and complete the picture of Henry House and his creator. May he rest in peace.