DOCSLIB.ORG

John Berryman and the Poetics of Survival

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
John Berryman and the Poetics of Survival HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: JOHN BERRYMAN AND THE POETICS OF SURVIVAL ___________________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University ___________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English ___________________________________________ by Andreas Britz June 2010 Britz 1 Introduction John Berryman was fifty-seven years old when he leapt to his death from the Washington Avenue Bridge on Friday, 7 January, 1972. Most of his friends and contemporaries had already gone before him; there was Randall Jarrell who stepped in front of a moving car on 14 October, 1965, and Dylan Thomas who had drank himself into a fatal stupor on 9 November 1953, and the beloved and brilliant Delmore Schwartz who died in obscurity in a cheap New York hotel on 11 July, 1966. Berryman’s untimely demise was sadly a predictable outcome for one of the finest specimens of America’s Middle Generation of poets. The so-called Middle Generation of poets of which Berryman was a part lived out their existence, at least initially, in the shadow of their Modernist predecessors such as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens. Berryman, like many of his contemporaries, was first indoctrinated in the style of late Modernist or 1940s period verse, exemplified perhaps by the famed English expatriate W.H. Auden. To say that Berryman’s early verse was unexceptional would be an understatement. Reviews of Berryman’s first two notable publications, Poems (1942), and The Dispossessed (1948) singled out for praise his admirable craftsmanship and awareness of tradition but denied him the compliment of innovation, insight, and feeling. Even Randall Jarrell had identified the symptoms of an Audenesque apprenticeship gone horribly awry. Berryman’s work was generic, commonplace, and worst, it was the work of a mature man. Britz 2 Berryman was intensely aware of the date of expiration for aspiring poets described by T.S. Eliot in his Modernist manifesto “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1920). His twenty-fifth birthday had passed long ago and it was with the label “poetaster” that he expected to be permanently branded. This considered, it wasn’t until the publication of his first long poem Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956) that Berryman’s late excellence began to manifest itself. In this poem, Berryman experimented with a greater variety of voices, an unusual use of syntax, and a personal involvement in the material of his poem that had been expressly forbidden by what he regarded as “T.S. Eliot’s perverse theory of the impersonality of the artist.” Berryman would capitalize on this success by conceiving of a more ambitious project that began with a nursery rhyme composed for his infant son Paul that later evolved into a 385 page poem that Berryman described as a “survival epic” focusing on one imaginary character named Henry. According to the author of The Dream Songs (1969), Henry is a middle- aged American male who occasionally appears in blackface and has suffered an irreversible loss which is never fully divulged by Berryman. Henry’s participation in blackface minstrelsy is one of the more fascinating aspects of his character. One is almost reminded of that sentimental and conscientious deserter of the white race in J.F. Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans (1826). Henry, like Natty Bumpo, has aligned himself with an endangered and persecuted people by putting on the face and habits of the black man, or stage- negro more accurately, in the hope that he might better endure the hardships Britz 3 and realities of modern life. Despite appearances, however convincing, both men are performers performing the roles of their adopted cultures. They are, essentially, white men in disguise. However, later in this discussion, quandaries will arise concerning Henry’s ethnicity, his racial ancestry, and spiritual solidarity with other retarded peoples. As early as the second song Henry initiates a dialogue between himself and an unnamed interlocutor who addresses him as Mr. Bones and variants thereof. Despite being extremely inarticulate, the interlocutor exists in the poem as the sole voice of rationality, constantly interfering in Henry’s psychedelic affairs for the protagonist’s benefit. It is thought that Berryman had originally modeled this relationship on that between Don Quixote and his devoted subordinate Sancho Panza in Cervantes’ mock-heroic masterpiece. Berryman outlines this relationship in his personal notes, writing: “They will talk and “debate, abt the proposed adventure, & its early details, etc, as betw. Don Q & SP”” (Smith 434). This considered; the poem changes drastically in the seventh and final book when the interlocutor’s interruptions become less frequent and Henry no longer requires the reassuring insights and heartfelt consultations of this jive-talking Job’s comforter. The seventh book documents Henry’s brief excursion in Ireland sometime after establishing himself as a major poet in his country of origin. This positive metamorphosis in the author becomes a topic of serious, repetitive introspection as he considers the new possibilities and limitations of his recent celebrity status. One surprising realization that occurs to Henry in this book is Britz 4 the futility or impracticality of disguise for a man who is both globally admired and globally recognized. Henry is no longer able to hide under his blackface persona of Mr. Bones, nor any of the other monikers that he assumes throughout the work, and must embrace his new role as a public figure by participating in interviews, answering fan mail, and graciously accepting the compliments and awards bestowed upon him by what was formerly a very hostile and unsympathetic world. Included in The Freedom of the Poet, a collection of essays and short stories published posthumously in 1976, is an essay on Anne Frank’s diary entitled “The Development of Anne Frank.” In this brilliant essay, Berryman insists that Anne Frank’s diary be read not only as an historical document but as a coming-of-age narrative, describing the maturation process of a young girl under the most disheartening and dreadful of circumstances. Berryman himself had intended to compose a poetic cycle about the abuses of fascist Germany, in particular the Holocaust, in 1948 under the provisional title The Black Book. The title referred to the numerous black books or holocaust testimonials that began to surface after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. These various black books, to which Anne Frank’s account belongs, confirmed with unmistakable clarity and specificity the grotesque and horrifying extent of Hitler’s Final Solution. Begun in July of that year and abandoned shortly thereafter, Berryman quickly realized that “he would never be able to shape such evil into art” (Mariani 211/2), despite his enduring interest in physical and psychological trauma. Britz 5 Of Anne Frank herself, Berryman wrote the following: “The author has been made into a spokesman against one of the grand crimes of our age, and for her race, and for all its victims, and for the victims […] of all tyrannies of this horrifying century” (92). Like much of Berryman’s criticism, his comments could just as easily be self-directed and self-applied to his own work, especially The Dream Songs. Henry, like Anne Frank, is a pitiful but resilient character whose only consolation however miniscule is the prospect of survival in an extremely violent and ideological society. Like Anne Frank, Henry too is a diarist who obsessively records the misfortunes of his, and by association, John Berryman’s long life. In many of his songs, particularly those offering some form of political commentary, Henry presents himself as a passionate representative of all peoples known and obscure who have experienced enormous hardship and alienation on an almost cosmic scale. Henry passively resists the intimidation and maltreatment directed toward him by a malevolent and even predatory god by doing exactly as Anne Frank did in her story, hiding. Henry’s exceptional ability for reinventing himself ensures him temporary anonymity in a life which spans almost four-hundred pages of excruciating mental and bodily torment. As the prime mover and ultimate authority of the Dream Song world, whose judgment and prophecy, as diabolical as it is, is thought to be unchallengeable, God alone, it therefore appears, is accountable for the protagonist’s disillusioned and eschatological sense of existence. This seems undeniably the case upon first reading The Dream Songs. However, as I will attempt to show, by the arrival of the Britz 6 seventh and final book, one begins to realize after the deus abscondis, the vacuous space left by God’s withdrawal in the poem was always filled and will continue to be filled by simple, random chance. That said, I do not exclude God from this discussion; on the contrary, until Book VII, I continue to attribute Henry’s near-insurmountable tragedies to his decree, precisely because Henry, a blaspheming although god-fearing man, himself does so. God is a vividly illuminated figure for Henry House, who, despite his actual absence in the poem, is nonetheless, animated as a character/concept through Henry’s unwavering belief in him. But more of this later. Simultaneously, Henry’s main prerogative in the poem is self-disclosure and autobiography for reasons understandably both noble and conceited. On the one hand, Henry wishes to embrace his role as representative figure and expose the world to crimes orchestrated against defenseless minorities of which he is a particularly vocal member. Less honorably, Henry also wants to be famous. Like Berryman, Henry finds himself to be the most fascinating subject for a serious and equally comic portrayal of humanity. Henry actively seeks reassurances and gestures of admiration from those of his contemporaries still living.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • S K E N È Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies
    S K E N È Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies 1:1 2015 The Chorus in Drama Edited by Guido Avezzù SKENÈ Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies Executive Editor Guido Avezzù. General Editors Guido Avezzù, Silvia Bigliazzi, Alessandro Serpieri. Editorial Board Simona Brunetti, Lisanna Calvi, Nicola Pasqualicchio, Gherardo Ugolini. Managing Editors Lisanna Calvi, Ivan Valbusa. Copyeditors Christine Chettle, Marco Duranti, Lucia Nigri, Flavia Palma, Carlo Vareschi, Tobia Zanon. Layout Editor Alex Zanutto. Advisory Board Anna Maria Belardinelli, Anton Bierl, Enoch Brater, Jean-Christophe Cavallin, Marco De Marinis, Tobias Döring, Paul Edmondson, Keir Douglas Elam, Ewan Fernie, Patrick Finglass, Enrico Giaccherini, Mark Griffith, Stephen Halliwell, Robert Henke, Pierre Judet de la Combe, Russ McDonald, Luigina Mortari, Guido Paduano, Franco Perrelli, Didier Plassard. Copyright © 2015 SKENÈ All rights reserved. ISSN 2421-4353 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher. SKENÈ Theatre and Drama Studies http://www.skenejournal.it [email protected] Alessandra Calanchi∗ Of Men and Ghosts: Delmore Schwartz’s Re-visitation of the Greek Chorus Abstract Among the many elements of interest we encounter in Delmore Schwartz’s literary production, the re–visitation of the Greek chorus is particularly relevant. Its innov- atory appeal, in fact, never ignores the call of tradition, and is rooted on the main issues of American culture, from immigration and problematic assimilation to the rise of
    [Show full text]
  • April 2005 Updrafts
    Chaparral from the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc. serving Californiaupdr poets for over 60 yearsaftsVolume 66, No. 3 • April, 2005 President Ted Kooser is Pulitzer Prize Winner James Shuman, PSJ 2005 has been a busy year for Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. On April 7, the Pulitzer commit- First Vice President tee announced that his Delights & Shadows had won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. And, Jeremy Shuman, PSJ later in the week, he accepted appointment to serve a second term as Poet Laureate. Second Vice President While many previous Poets Laureate have also Katharine Wilson, RF Winners of the Pulitzer Prize receive a $10,000 award. Third Vice President been winners of the Pulitzer, not since 1947 has the Pegasus Buchanan, Tw prize been won by the sitting laureate. In that year, A professor of English at the University of Ne- braska-Lincoln, Kooser’s award-winning book, De- Fourth Vice President Robert Lowell won— and at the time the position Eric Donald, Or was known as the Consultant in Poetry to the Li- lights & Shadows, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2004. Treasurer brary of Congress. It was not until 1986 that the po- Ursula Gibson, Tw sition became known as the Poet Laureate Consult- “I’m thrilled by this,” Kooser said shortly after Recording Secretary ant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. the announcement. “ It’s something every poet dreams Lee Collins, Tw The 89th annual prizes in Journalism, Letters, of. There are so many gifted poets in this country, Corresponding Secretary Drama and Music were announced by Columbia Uni- and so many marvelous collections published each Dorothy Marshall, Tw versity.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethnicity, Lyricism, and John Berryman's Dream Songs
    Imaginary Jews and True Confessions: Ethnicity, Lyricism, and John Berryman’s Dream Songs ANDREW GROSS . Jews, who have changed much in the course of history, are certainly no race, [but] the anti‐Semites in a way are a race, because they always use the same slogans, display the same attitudes, indeed almost look alike. —Max Horkheimer1 John Berryman’s “The Imaginary Jew,” published in the Kenyon Review of 1945, is in some ways a rather programmatic account of one man’s conversion from parlor anti‐ Semitism to a feeling of solidarity with Jews. The climax occurs when a bigot accuses the narrator of being Jewish in order to discredit him in an argument over Roosevelt’s foreign policy prior to the American entry into World War II. The accusation completely unnerves the narrator in ways he does not immediately understand, and he is shocked to see that it discredits him in the eyes of the crowd, which has assembled at Union Square to hear impromptu debates. Later, after leaving the scene of his embarrassment, he decides to lay claim to this mistaken, or imaginary, identity, and comes to the following conclusion about the nature of prejudice: “My persecutors were right: I was a Jew. The imaginary Jew I was was as real as the imaginary Jew hunted down, on other nights and days, in a real Jew. Every murderer strikes the mirror, the lash of the torturer falls on the mirror and cuts the real image, and the real and the imaginary blood flow down together.”2 The story garnered some attention when it appeared in 1945.
    [Show full text]
  • Poetry Magazine
    Poetry Magazine 2008- January Articles Made to Measure, The Red Sea Devotion: The Garment District Nocturnal, Divine Rights Devotion: The Burnt-Over District Stephen Edgar Bruce Smith callas lover, cruel, cruel summer The History of Mothers of Sons D.A. Powell Lisa Furmanski Man of War, Argonaut's Vow Pink Ocean Carol Frost Stuart Dybek The Solipsist The Taste of Silence Troy Jollimore Adam Kirsch Citation Responsibilities Joshua Mehigan Joanie V. Mackowski Repetition,The Late Worm, Clamor and Quiet Cut Out For It Ange Mlinko Kay Ryan Closing the Circle Getting Where We're Going Jhumpa Lahiri John Brehm A Night in Brooklyn The Dead Remember Brooklyn The Rain-Streaked Avenues of Central Queens D. Nurkse Moose Dreams, Dogwood William Johnson Biographer Samuel Menashe La Porte Rachel Webster There's Nothing More Wendy Videlock Poetry Magazine 2008- Feb. Articles Midsummer, Dawn Leaving Prague: A Notebook Louise Glück Alexei Tsvetkov bon bon il est un pays, Mort de A.D. Four Takes à elle l’acte calme, Ascension D. H. Tracy La Mouche, Arènes de Lutèce Samuel Beckett Letter to the Editor James Matthew Wilson Fowling Piece Heidy Steidlmayer Letter to the Editor Sean Lysaght An Old Woman’s Painting Letter to the Editor Jim Carmin Lynn Emanuel Letter to the Editor Michael Hudson Full Fathom Jorie Graham Letter to the Editor Robert Longoni J. Learns the Difference Between Letter to the Editor Adam Zagajewski Poverty and Having No Money Jeffrey Schultz Stemming from Stevens Lisa Williams Ladybirds Larissa Szporluk Rose Thorns Molly McQuade Kertész: Latrine,Ross: Children of the Ghetto,Ross: Yellow Star Doisneau: Underground Press Sudek: Tree Petersen: Kleichen and a Man Kolár: Housing Estate George Szirtes Sincerity and Its Discontents in American Poetry Now Peter Campion Poetry Magazine 2008- March Articles Nights on Planet Earth Campbell McGrath Letter to the Editor William Watt Containment, The Catch Letter to the Editor Michael A.E.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Shalkey Honors Thesis.Pdf
    THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH THE CONFESSIONAL POETS: REMOVING THE MASK OF IMPERSONALITY WITH ALL THE SKILLS OF THE MODERNISTS VANESSA SHALKEY Spring 2012 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in English and International Politics with honors in English Reviewed and approved* by the following: John Marsh Assistant Professor of English Thesis Supervisor Lisa Sternlieb English Honors Advisor Honors Advisor Christopher Castiglia Liberal Arts Research Professor of English CALS Senior Scholar in Residence Second Reader *Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. !! ABSTRACT The pioneers of the frontier of new art forms have always made themselves vulnerable to the criticism of the previous generation; however, this criticism often overshadows and undermines the true success of these bold artists. The confessional poets were some of these trailblazers who took American poetry into areas untouched by previous generations and were criticized for breaking with the traditional methods of past poets--especially the modernists. Poets like Robert Lowell and John Berryman used their life events as subject matter for their poetry, which the New Critics thought was bad form. This controversial shift in style won these poets the name “confessional,” a title that many of the poets to whom it refers found disparaging. The label “confessional” gives the impression that these poets did little more than use their poems as diary entries, when in fact they wrote magnificent poetry with the same talent and technical skills that the modernist poets displayed. This thesis is an examination of the confessional poets’ use of effective poetic devices favored by the modernist poets to analyze whether or not the act of removing the mask of impersonality negatively impacted the ability of the confessional poets to develop complex themes and transmute feelings to the reader.
    [Show full text]
  • Hammer Langdon Cv18.Pdf
    LANGDON HAMMER Department of English [email protected] Yale University jamesmerrillweb.com New Haven CT 06520-8302 yale.edu bio page USA EDUCATION Ph.D., English Language and Literature, Yale University B.A., English Major, summa cum laude, Yale University ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT Niel Gray, Jr., Professor of English and American Studies, Yale University Appointments in the English Department at Yale: Lecturer Convertible, 1987; Assistant Professor, 1989; Associate Professor with tenure, 1996; Professor, 2001; Department Chair, 2005-fall 2008, Acting Department Chair, fall 2011 and fall 2013, Department Chair, 2014-17 and 2017-19 PUBLICATIONS Books In progress: Elizabeth Bishop: Life & Works, A Critical Biography (under contract to Farrar Straus Giroux) The Oxford History of Poetry in English (Oxford UP), 18 volumes, Patrick Cheney general editor; LH coordinating editor for Volumes 10-12 on American Poetry, and editor for Volume 12 The Oxford History of American Poetry Since 1939 The Selected Letters of James Merrill, edited by LH, J. D. McClatchy, and Stephen Yenser (under contract to Alfred A. Knopf) Published: James Merrill: Poems, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, selected and edited with a foreword by LH (Penguin RandomHouse, 2017), 256 pp James Merrill: Life and Art (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 944 pp, 32 pp images, and jamesmerrillweb.com, a website companion with more images, bibliography, documents, linked reviews, and blog Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, 2016. Finalist for the Poetry 2 Foundation’s Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism, 2015. Named a Times Literary Supplement “Book of the Year, 2015” (two nominations, November 25). New York Times, “Top Books of 2015” (December 11).
    [Show full text]
  • November 2012
    founded in 1912 by harriet monroe November 2012 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume cci • number 2 CONTENTS November 2012 POEMS elizabeth spires 95 Pome hailey leithauser 96 Mockingbird vijay seshadri 98 Sequence casey thayer 102 The Hurt Sonnet idra novey 103 The Visitor La Prima Victoria Of the Divine as Absence and Single Letter donald revell 106 Borodin katie ford 107 The Soul Foreign Song Speak to Us jim harrison 110 The Present The Girls of Winter joanna klink 112 Toward what island-home am I moving david yezzi 113 Cough lisa williams 114 Torch POET photos the editors 117 Photographs Notes RUTH Lilly poetry FELLOWS reginald dwayne betts 149 At the End of Life, a Secret For the City that Nearly Broke Me A Postmodern Two-Step nicholas friedman 154 The Magic Trick As Is Not the Song, but After richie hofmann 157 Fresco Imperial City Keys to the City jacob saenz 160 I Remember Lotería GTA: San Andreas (or, “Grove Street, bitch!”) Blue Line Incident rickey laurentiis 166 Southern Gothic Swing Low You Are Not Christ COMMENT clive james 171 A Stretch of Verse adam kirsch 182 Rocket and Lightship letters 193 contributors 195 announcement of prizes 197 back page 207 Editor christian wiman Senior Editor don share Associate Editor fred sasaki Managing Editor valerie jean johnson Editorial Assistant lindsay garbutt Reader christina pugh Art Direction winterhouse studio cover art by alex nabaum “Pegged,” 2012 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry • November 2012 • Volume 201 • Number 2 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation.
    [Show full text]
  • Caught Between Continents the Holocaust and Israel’S Attempt to Claim the European Jewish Diaspora
    Caught between Continents The Holocaust and Israel’s Attempt to Claim the European Jewish Diaspora Zachary Kimmel Columbia University Abstract Israel’s idea of its sovereignty over Jewish cultural production has been essential in defining national mythology and self-consciousness ever since its founding as a state in 1948. But by what right does Israel make such claims? This article examines that question through exploring three legal cases: Franz Kafka’s manuscripts, the historical records of Jewish Vienna, and the literary estate of Lithuanian-born Chaim Grade. All three cases reveal a common jurisprudential and cultural logic, a rescue narrative that is central to the State of Israel itself. To this day, Israel maintains an idea of its sovereignty over Jewish cultural production, and a study of these cases demonstrates how the Holocaust plays as decisive a role in the creation and implementation of Israeli policy and jurisprudential practice as it has in its national identity more broadly. Article After decades of legal wrangling, a Tel Aviv court ruled in June 2015 that the manuscripts of Franz Kafka must be handed over to the National Library of Israel.1 The final batch of Kafka’s papers arrived in Jerusalem on August 7, 2019.2 Despite the fact that Kafka died in Prague in 1924, Israel’s lawyers argued that his manuscripts ought to be the legal property of the Jewish nation-state. Yet by what right does Israel make such claims—even over the claims of other nations where the artists in question were citizens, or ignoring the ethno- religious identifications of the artists themselves? This article examines that question, exploring the fate of Kafka’s manuscripts as well as legal battles over two other important archives with Jewish lineage: the historical records of Jewish Vienna and the literary estate of Lithuanian-born Chaim Grade.
    [Show full text]
  • Blues Tribute Poems in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century American Poetry Emily Rutter
    Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2014 Constructions of the Muse: Blues Tribute Poems in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century American Poetry Emily Rutter Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Rutter, E. (2014). Constructions of the Muse: Blues Tribute Poems in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century American Poetry (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1136 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE MUSE: BLUES TRIBUTE POEMS IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Emily Ruth Rutter March 2014 Copyright by Emily Ruth Rutter 2014 ii CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE MUSE: BLUES TRIBUTE POEMS IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY By Emily Ruth Rutter Approved March 12, 2014 ________________________________ ________________________________ Linda A. Kinnahan Kathy L. Glass Professor of English Associate Professor of English (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Laura Engel Thomas P. Kinnahan Associate Professor of English Assistant Professor of English (Committee Member) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James Swindal Greg Barnhisel Dean, McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Chair, English Department Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of English iii ABSTRACT CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE MUSE: BLUES TRIBUTE POEMS IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY By Emily Ruth Rutter March 2014 Dissertation supervised by Professor Linda A.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Notes Introduction 1. Delmore Schwartz, Last & Lost Poems, ed. Robert Phillips (New York: Vanguard Press, 1979), 4. The poem is dated 1954, but it gathers preoccupations from over a decade earlier. 2. Walt Whitman, “Preface 1855—Leaves of Grass, First Edition,” in Leaves of Grass and Other Writings, ed. Michael Moon (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 616. 3. James Atlas, Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976). The rock star Lou Reed, a former student, dedicated the song “European Son,” on the album The Velvet Underground & Nico, to Schwartz. 4. Delmore Schwartz, Genesis (New York: New Directions, 1943), 5. 5. Delmore Schwartz, “America! America!” in In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories, 20. 6. Delmore Schwartz, “The Fiction of Ernest Hemingway: Moral Historian of the American Dream” (1955), in Selected Essays of Delmore Schwartz, 271. 7. Schwartz, “The Fiction of Ernest Hemingway,” 272. 8. Howe, “Foreword to Atlas, ed.,” in In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, and Other Stories, vii; Alfred Kazin, New York Jew (London: Secker and Warburg, 1978), 25. 9. Cited in DS & JL Letters, 47. 10. Atlas, Delmore Schwartz, 154. Eliot regretted that he was unable to bring out a British edition of Schwartz’s poems. 11. Atlas, Delmore Schwartz, 129. Wallace Stevens, Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens (New York: Knopf, 1981), December 27, 1940, 382. 12. John Berryman, The Dream Songs (London: Faber, 1990) (149), 168. 13. Delmore Schwartz, “Views of a Second Violinist” (1949), in Selected Essays of Delmore Schwartz, 25. 14. He was also film editor of The New Republic between 1955 and 1957.
    [Show full text]
  • In the Final Two Years of His Life John Berryman Completed Two Collections of Poems – Love & Fame and Delusions, Etc
    LOVE & FAME AND THE SELF IN SOCIETY PHILIP COLEMAN In the final two years of his life John Berryman completed two collections of poems – Love & Fame and Delusions, Etc. – and he brought close to conclusion the novel Recovery, which was published posthumously in 1973. In a letter to Robert Giroux in May 1971 he described his “Present plan” in the following way: 1) vol. Essays/stories – Spr. ’72 2) Delusions, Etc. – Fall ’72 3) Recovery (the novel) – ’73? 4) Shakespeare’s Reality – ’74? 5) The Blue Book of Poetry (ed.) 6?) I am also doing a Life of Christ for Martha [Berryman’s daughter]: illustrated – e.g. Titian’s great “Scourging” in the Pinakothek.1 Berryman’s activity and output during this period of his life is remarkable for a number of reasons, not least because he spent a great deal of this time in hospital undergoing treatment for alcoholism, as well as carrying out his duties as Regents’ Professor of Humanities at the University of Minnesota. It is interesting too because, much to the poet’s dismay, the reception of The Dream Songs had more or less decided his critical fate, as Robert Lowell implied when he wrote that Berryman’s “last two books, Love & Fame and Delusions, Etc., move” but only insofar as “they fill out the frame” of The Dream 1 Quoted by Robert Giroux in the Preface to John Berryman, The Freedom of the Poet, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976, viii. 226 Philip Coleman Songs and “prepare for his [Berryman’s] death”.2 Lowell’s remark is problematic for a number of reasons, but mainly because it suggests that the work Berryman produced in the last few years of his life in some sense pre-empted or prophesied his death by suicide in January 1972.
    [Show full text]
  • NYU Alumni Magazine Issue 10
    Charles Simic grapples with an unexpected national title by Michael Scharf Photograph by Peter Gregoire The ConsidersPoet WHEN CHARLES SIMIC WAS NAMED thing is very far away, and we just came was melting. He has never been directly the 15th U.S. Poet Laureate this past sum- home from the market. We’re unloading a confrontational in the manner of Amiri mer,he was,at nearly 70,an eminent Amer- week’s worth of groceries.The phone rings Baraka, whose poem “Somebody Blew Up ican poet: the winner of a MacArthur out of the blue—and they tell you.” America” (2002) condemns a long list of Foundation “genius” grant and of the A sudden call where a mysterious “American terrorists,” or Allen Ginsberg, Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his 1989 “they” make a possibly life-changing pro- who asked outright “America when will collection The World Doesn’t End (Harvest). nouncement in the midst of a mundane you be angelic?” (in America, 1956) and ref- Still, he was surprised when the phone call task is characteristic of the “dark illumina- erenced everyone from Walt Whitman to came one morning to his New Hampshire tions and acrid comedy,” as New York Sun Richard Nixon. Yet Simic has, he says, home. “Early August, nothing is happen- critic Adam Kirsch has written, that won “pretty much endorsed that sense of the ing,”Simic (WSC ’67) recounts in a cadence Simic national recognition. The call gave poet who speaks truth to power.” not unlike his verse.“In the boonies, every- Simic pause not only because his ice cream In “The Lights Are On Everywhere,” 48 / SPRING 2008 / NYU etrs POET LAUREATE CHARLES SIMIC, NOTED FOR HIS CUTTING WIT, VISITED FLORENCE PRIME MEATS IN THE VILLAGE DURING A RECENT TRIP TO HIS OLD NEIGHBORHOOD.
    [Show full text]