DOCSLIB.ORG

Over the Past Three Decades Much of the Criticism on John Berryman's

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Over the Past Three Decades Much of the Criticism on John Berryman's “WE WRITE VERSE WITH OUR EARS”: BERRYMAN’S MUSIC MARIA JOHNSTON Over the past three decades much of the criticism on John Berryman’s poetry has tended to focus primarily on biographical details, the poet’s troubled childhood, his mental health, alcoholism, depression and the tragic circumstances of his death. Berryman, along with Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, is regarded as one of the most outstanding figures of the “Middle Generation” of twentieth-century American poets, but the label of “Confessional” poet was one that Berryman himself held “with rage and contempt”.1 Here instead was a poet consummately dedicated to the craft of poetry, always attentive to the possibilities of language, serving his apprenticeship under W.B. Yeats and W.H. Auden and committing himself to a life of learning as he set about schooling himself to become a poet of remarkable technical mastery. Berryman viewed this process of apprenticeship as integral to the development of all artists, as he declared in an interview with William Heyen when he drew an insightful comparison between the composition of the sister arts of poetry and music: I believe in apprenticeship. Suppose I wanted to be a composer and write piano concertos. I don’t buy some music paper and sit down. I don’t know what an oboe can do! Isn’t that so? Okay. We serve an apprenticeship.2 1 Peter Stitt, “The Art of Poetry”, in Berryman’s Understanding: Reflections on the Poetry of John Berryman, ed. Harry Thomas, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988, 21. 2 William Heyen, “John Berryman: A Memoir and an Interview”, Ohio Review, XV/2 (Winter 1974), 59. 192 Maria Johnston Although no sustained examination of the technical aspects of Berryman’s poetry exists – the breadth of his poetic resource is often overlooked – some critics have made passing mention to the musical nature of the work. Edward Mendelson, for example, has stated how the Dream Songs “are always patterned and often musical”, while Douglas Dunn has noted Berryman’s “use of musical-sounding verse”.3 Of the early, central influence of Yeats and Auden, Michael Dennis Browne – in an essay on Berryman’s work that enthuses over the “extraordinary art of these poems” and their “authority of music” – sees Berryman’s poetic mentors as masters of a similar “combination of passionate personal utterance and formal memorable music”.4 Browne was first “struck” by the “sheer music” of Berryman’s poems at a reading Berryman gave in 1971: He read them slowly – more slowly at times than I would have thought possible – but there were also variations within this slowness, sudden bursts and accelerations, sudden drastic increases in volume. And the poems came over to the audience with an extraordinary combination of authority and intimacy – a kind of lyrical power that I had not heard in spoken poetry before.5 According to Browne, Berryman was wholly alert to the aural subtleties of language, the different registers of the human voice, the phonological effects and intricate patterns that shape poetry and the music of the line in verse. Heyen, indeed, has recalled that Berryman “was always noting lines, sounding out lines”.6 When asked in an interview about the process of beginning a poem, Berryman replied, “you get going with a pencil, and rhymes emerge and sentences emerge”.7 The attention to sound and form was, in other words, integral from the very start. In his introduction “Note on Poetry” in Five Young American Poets (1940), 3 Edward Mendelson, “How to Read Berryman’s Dream Songs”, in John Berryman, ed. Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House, 1989, 53-69; 54, and Douglas Dunn, “Gaiety & Lamentation: The Defeat of John Berryman”, in Berryman’s Understanding, 141. 4 Michael Dennis Browne, “Henry Fermenting: Debts to The Dream Songs”, Ohio Review, XV/2 (Winter 1974), 77. 5 Ibid., 76. 6 Heyen, “John Berryman: A Memoir …”, 48. 7 John Plotz, et al., “An Interview with John Berryman”, in Berryman’s Understanding, ed. Thomas, 13. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 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]
  • 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]
  • 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]
  • (Self-) Portraits in the Work of John Berryman, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and Nan Goldin
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2019 “Whispers Out of Time”: Memorializing (Self-) Portraits in the Work of John Berryman, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and Nan Goldin Andrew D. King The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3185 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] “WHISPERS OUT OF TIME”: MEMORIALIZING (SELF-) PORTRAITS IN THE WORK OF JOHN BERRYMAN, JOHN ASHBERY, ANNE CARSON, AND NAN GOLDIN By ANDREW D. KING A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2019 © 2019 ANDREW D. KING All rights reserved ii “WHISPERS OUT OF TIME”: MEMORIALIZING (SELF-) PORTRAITS IN THE WORK OF JOHN BERRYMAN, JOHN ASHBERY, ANNE CARSON, AND NAN GOLDIN By Andrew D. King This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in satisfaction of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. Date George Fragopoulos Thesis Advisor Date Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT “Whispers Out of Time”: Memorializing (Self-)Portraits in the work of John Berryman, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and Nan Goldin by Andrew D. King Advisor: George Fragopoulos This thesis documents four distinct post-WWII North American writers and artists—the poet John Berryman, the poet John Ashbery, the classicist and writer Anne Carson, and the photographer Nan Goldin—who expanded traditional definitions and practices of portraiture.
    [Show full text]
  • Chicken Paprika and Tug of War: the Romantic "Dream Song 4" by John Berryman Patrick Connell College of the Holy Cross
    The Criterion Volume 2019 Article 4 2019 Chicken Paprika and Tug of War: the Romantic "Dream Song 4" by John Berryman Patrick Connell College of the Holy Cross Follow this and additional works at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/criterion Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Connell, Patrick (2019) "Chicken Paprika and Tug of War: the Romantic "Dream Song 4" by John Berryman," The Criterion: Vol. 2019 , Article 4. Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/criterion/vol2019/iss1/4 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by CrossWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in The rC iterion by an authorized editor of CrossWorks. !37 Connell Chicken Paprika Chicken Paprika and Tug of War: the Romantic “Dream Song 4” by John Berryman Patrick Connell College of the Holy Cross Class of 2022 IN JOHN BERRYMAN’S “Dream Song 4” the speakers, Henry and Mr. Bones, oppose one another within the preconscious of a man suppressing his primal sexual desire in a restaurant. As stated by Helen Vendler, these archetypes of American minstrelsy roughly depict the Freudian Superego and Id (Vendler). The scene is narrated from Henry’s perspective with interjections only by the consciousness of his opposite, “Mr. Bones.” What takes place is the internal dialogue of a man brimming with jealousy and sexual desire, inhibited only by the colloquial rationalization of his Superego — the ideal self — and the repercussions of springing at “her compact & delicious body” (Berryman l.1) in front of her spouse and four others.
    [Show full text]
  • This Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation Has Been Downloaded from the King’S Research Portal At
    This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ 'An image of the dead' : the modern role of elegy with special reference to John Berryman's Dream Songs. Jepson, Jeffrey The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 10. Oct. 2021 `An Image of the Dead': the Modern Role of Elegy with Special Reference to John Berryman's Dream Songs. by Jeffrey Jepson submitted for the degree of PhD University of London 1998 King's College London ß156 LONßMN Ut; IV.
    [Show full text]
  • Colossal Departures
    Colossal Departures Figuring the Lost Father in Berryman's and Plath's Poetry "—end of this But an anger helps me" —JOHN BERRYMAN, on a handwritten draft of Dream Song 42, dated 28/9 Dec. 19621 IN A TELEVISION INTERVIEW done for the BBC, a drunken John Berryman spoke to A. Alvarez about his admiration for and fascination with fellow American poet Sylvia Plath. Berryman especially singled out for praise the famous poem "Daddy," quoting with relish the poem's final line: "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through" (244). What particularly intrigued him, Berryman noted, was that since Plath's father died when she was only eight, the bitter poem is essentially "all fantasy; she's only dealing with a father figure, or phantom, and it killed her."2 While Berryman is perhaps nai've about the awareness and maturity of any eight-year old, let alone a precocious child like Plath, it is both appropriate and ironic that Berryman should focus on the early death of the poet's father and the subsequent mytholo-gizing of this loss, for his own poetry enacts a similar ritual. John Allyn Smith, father of the future poet, then named John Allyn Smith, Jr., died when young John was eleven. Although some degree of mystery has always shrouded Smith's death, it was ruled a suicide by gunshot. Berryman, his last name quickly changed less than three months later, so as to match that of his new stepfather, would be haunted all his life by this loss, and in his poetic masterwork, The Dream Songs, would mythologize both the loss and the figure of the father in larger-than-life terms very similar to those of 145 Sylvia Plath.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF Download William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems
    WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS: SELECTED POEMS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK William Carlos Williams,Robert Pinsky | 200 pages | 16 Oct 2014 | The Library of America | 9781931082716 | English | New York, United States William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems PDF Book Eliot, and John Berryman. In addition to including many more pieces, Tomlinson has organized the whole in chronological order. Nobody'll ever see the kid's name in print, anyway. He's humorous, energetic, and kind-hearted: "Flowers By the Sea" When over the flowery, sharp pasture's edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form--chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone but color and the movement--or the shape perhaps--of restlessness, whereas the sea is circled and sways peacefully upon its plantlike stem Here, to me, flowers represent individuals - lovely, fragile and cranky, who could be overtaken by life's greater considerations the ocean , but by some grace are left to live and grow. I will surely seek out more of his work when I get a chance. View 2 comments. That's exactly how slow going it was. I felt flames coming out of the poems some of them gentle which warmed up my day, and others very strong, which deeply penetrated inside some of my very painful wounds cauterizing them. From the Introduction by Randall Jarrell: "When you have read Paterson you know for the rest of your life what it is like to be a waterfall; and what other poet has turned so many of his readers into trees? Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams ,. Dec 13, Anima rated it it was amazing.
    [Show full text]
  • Exam List: Modernist Roots of Contemporary American Narrative Poetry Brian Brodeur
    Exam List: Modernist Roots of Contemporary American Narrative Poetry Brian Brodeur Primary: 1. E.A. Robinson, Selected Poems (ed. Mezey) 2. Robert Frost, Robert Frost’s Poems (ed. Untermeyer) 3. Wallace Stevens, The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937) 4. T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems (1963), plus these essays: “Reflections on Vers Libre” (1917), “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1917) “Hamlet” (1919), “The Perfect Critic” (1920), “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921), “The Function of Criticism” (1923), “Ulysses, Order and Myth” (1923), and “Baudelaire” (1940) 5. Ezra Pound, Selected Cantos (1965) 6. W.C. Williams, Paterson (1963) 7. H.D., Trilogy (1946) 8. Robinson Jeffers, “Tamar” (1923), “Roan Stallion” (1925), “Prelude” (1926), “An Artist” (1928), “A Redeemer” (1928), “Cawdor” (1928), “The Loving Shepherdess” (1928), “Dear Judas” (1928), “Give Your Heart to the Hawks” (1933), “Hungerfield” (1948) 9. Hart Crane, The Bridge (1930) 10. Robert Lowell, Life Studies (1959) and The Dolphin (1973) 11. Theodore Roethke, The Far Field (1964) 12. Elizabeth Bishop, “The Man-Moth” (1946), “The Weed” (1946), “The Fish” (1946), “The Burglar of Babylon” (1965), “First Death in Nova Scotia” (1965), “In the Waiting Room” (1976), “The Moose” (1976), and “Santarem” (1978-9). 13. John Berryman, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956) and The Dream Songs (1969) 14. James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover (1982) 15. Dana Gioia, David Mason, and Meg Schoerke, Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2003) Secondary: 1. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Poetic Principle” (1850) 2. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946) 3. Frank Kermode, “The Modern” (1967) 4. Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (1971) 5.
    [Show full text]
  • Berryman's "The Dream Songs"
    The Johns Hopkins University Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/27542549 . Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Sewanee Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 71.76.187.20 on Thu, 24 Oct 2013 18:25:53 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 464 ARTS AND LETTERS BERRYMAN'S THE DREAM SONGS* By LARRY P. VONALT To terrify and comfort is the object of John Berryman's The Dream Songs. Henry Pussy-Cat, the persona of the poem, and John Berryman, its poet?in this case one and not quite the same person? are masters of grace and fear. Henry, like the poet in Berryman's earlier long poem, Homage toMistress Bradstreet, is "a man of griefs & fits/trying to be [his own] friend". One of the brilliant innovations of that poem which Berryman has extended and carried to greater brilliance in The Dream Songs is the use of what Berryman calls "the the use of the pronoun Berryman ambiguous pronoun". Through " believes that "a commitment to identity can be 'reserved,' and, as a result, the "poet himself is both left out and put in" the poem.
    [Show full text]
  • John Berryman and the American Legacy of Dylan Thomas
    GWASG PRIFYSGOL CYMRU UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS John Berryman and the American Legacy of Dylan Thomas How to Cite: Kurt Heinzelman, ‘John Berryman and the American Legacy of Dylan Thomas’, International Journal of Welsh Writing in English, 5 (2018), 1, DOI: 10.16995/ijwwe.5.5 Published: April 2018 Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of the International Journal of Welsh Writing in English, which is a journal of the University of Wales Press. Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s). This article is freely available to read but, for reasons of third-party content inclusion, is not openly licensed. Open Access: International Journal of Welsh Writing in English is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. The University of Wales Press wishes to acknowledge the funding received from the Open Library of Humanities towards the cost of producing this open access journal. Heinzelman.indd 1 26/04/2018 09:03 Heinzelman.indd 2 26/04/2018 09:03 JOHN BERRYMAN AND THE AMERICAN LEGACY OF DYLAN THOMAS1 Kurt Heinzelman, The University of Texas at Austin Abstract Lost in the celebration of the 2014 Dylan Thomas centenary was why Thomas’s reputation, at least among literary historians and particularly fellow poets, had declined so much in the nearly sixty years since his death. That those poets once influenced by Thomas – and they were legion – produced a kind of ‘Dylan Effect’, diluting what was once impressive is one thesis of this article, even as non- professional readers continue to this day to revere some of his work.
    [Show full text]
  • 65-71. Multiculturalism in Contemporary American Poetry Robert J. Bertholf Berth
    Journal of American Studies of Turkey 1 (1995): 65-71. Multiculturalism in Contemporary American Poetry Robert J. Bertholf [email protected] The period 1968-1972 formed a pivot for American poetry, especially for the avant-garde. The turmoil in the society caused by the Vietnam War came to a climax. President Johnson declined to run for office for a second term, and in the aftermath of the war and more betrayals of the public trust, President Nixon was forced to leave the Presidency in 1974. The 1960s ended and the 1970s began with deep divisions in the society, the economy as well as in the province of poetry. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson engineered the passage of the Civil Rights Bill through Congress. This was the culmination of years of social protest and civil right marches. But there would be no going back to a separated society of isolated minorities. It produced the beginning of a cultural openness in American society; it allowed the voices of minorities to be heard, to have political as well as artistic and poetic authority. It must be borne in mind that forming a multicultural society has always been the promise of America as a nation. America is an immigrant society which imposed itself on Native American society and then imported Africans as an economic factor. That is not an apology. It has always been a sour irony of American history that the equality embedded in our nation's Constitution and Bill of Rights by men of great vision has struggled to emerge as actual social, political, and artistic equality.
    [Show full text]