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John Berryman [1914-1972] USA
Ranked #140 in the top 380 poets
Votes 79%: 72 up, 19 down

Confession, religion, spiritual rebirth.

Pungent and many-leveled portrait of a complex personality which, for all its eccentricity, stayed close to the center of the intellectual and emotional life.

Alcohol abuse, depression. Poems often revolved around the sordid details of his personal problems. 

"Dream Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. / They are only meant to terrify & comfort".

John Berryman was born John Smith in MacAlester, Oklahoma, in 1914. He received an undergraduate degree from Columbia College in 1936 and attended Cambridge University on a fellowship. He taught at Wayne State University in Detroit and went on to occupy posts at Harvard and Princeton. From 1955 until his death in 1972, he was a professor at the University of Minnesota.

His early work was published in a volume entitled Five Young American Poets in 1940 and reflects the influences of the British poets W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the Americans Hart Crane and Ezra Pound. Tremendously erudite and a brilliant teacher, Berryman in his early work—Poems (1942) and The Dispossessed (1948)—displayed great technical control in poems that remained firmly rooted in the conventions of the time.

It was not until the publication of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet in 1956, when he was already in his forties, that he won widespread recognition and acclaim as a boldly original and innovative poet. Nevertheless, no one was prepared for the innovation that would follow, a collection that would seal Berryman`s reputation as an essential American original: 77 Dream Songs, which was published in 1964 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize, unveiled the unforgettable and irreppressible alter egos "Henry" and "Mr. Bones" in a sequence of sonnet-like poems whose wrenched syntax, scrambled diction, extraordinary leaps of language and tone, and wild mixture of high lyricism and low comedy plumbed the extreme reaches of a human soul and psyche. In succeeding years Berryman added to the sequence, until there were nearly four hundred collected as The Dream Songs.

But the psyche that had been plumbed could not bear the strain; Berryman, who never recovered from the childhood shock of his father`s suicide, was prone to emotional instability and heavy drinking throughout his life. Tragically, in 1972, he died by throwing himself off a bridge in Minneapolis.

John Berryman was elected a Fellow of The Academy of American Poets in 1966 and served as a Chancellor from 1968 until his death.

Confessionalism, Committed suicide, Bipolar disorder

YearsCountryPoetInteraction
1612-1672
ENG/USA
Anne Bradstreet
→ influenced John Berryman
1844-1889
ENG
Gerard Manley Hopkins
→ influenced John Berryman
1865-1939
IRL
William Butler Yeats
→ influenced John Berryman
1885-1972
USA
Ezra Pound
→ influenced John Berryman
1889-1973
USA
Conrad Potter Aiken
→ praised John Berryman
1897-1970
USA
Louise Bogan
→ disliked John Berryman
1899-1932
USA
Harold Hart Crane
→ influenced John Berryman
1899-1979
USA
Allen Tate
→ influenced John Berryman
1907-1973
ENG/USA
W H Auden
→ influenced John Berryman
1917-1977
USA
Robert Lowell
→ close to John Berryman
1908-1963
USA
Theodore Roethke
← friend of John Berryman
1913-1966
USA
Delmore Schwartz
← friend of John Berryman
1914-1965
USA
Randall Jarrell
← friend of John Berryman
1925-2004
USA
Donald Justice
← influenced by John Berryman


WorkLangRating
Winter Landscape
eng
3
Sonnet 104 - A spot of poontang on a five-foot piece
eng
2
Dream Song 14: Life, friends, is boring
eng
1
Dream Song 172
eng
1
Dream Song 74: Henry hates the world. What the world to Henry
eng
1
Dream Song 80: Op. posth. no. 3
eng
1
The Ball Poem
eng
1
Dream Song 10
eng
0
Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage
eng
0
Dream Song 101: A shallow lake, with many waterbirds
eng
0
Dream Song 102: The sunburnt terraces which swans make home
eng
0
Dream Song 103: I consider a song will be as humming-bird
eng
0
Dream Song 104: Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!
eng
0
Dream Song 105: As a kid I believed in democracy: I
eng
0
Dream Song 106: 28 July
eng
0
Dream Song 107: Three `coons come at his garbage. He be cross
eng
0
Dream Song 108: Sixteen below. Our care like stranded hulls
eng
0
Dream Song 109: She mentioned `worthless` & he took it in
eng
0
Dream Song 110: It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that
eng
0
Dream Song 111: I miss him. When I get back to camp
eng
0
Dream Song 112: My framework is broken, I am coming to an end
eng
0
Dream Song 113: or Amy Vladeck or Riva Freifeld
eng
0
Dream Song 114: Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines
eng
0
Dream Song 115: Her properties, like her of course & frisky & new
eng
0
Dream Song 116: Through the forest, followed, Henry made his silky way
eng
0
Dream Song 117: Disturbed, when Henry`s love returned with a hubby
eng
0
Dream Song 118: He wondered: Do I love? all this applause
eng
0
Dream Song 119: Fresh-shaven, past months & a picture in New York
eng
0
Dream Song 11: His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.
eng
0
Dream Song 120: Foes I sniff, when I have less to shout
eng
0
Dream Song 121: Grief is fatiguing. He is out of it
eng
0
Dream Song 122: He published his girl`s bottom in staid pages
eng
0
Dream Song 123: Daples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north
eng
0
Dream Song 124:" Behold I bring you tidings of great joy"
eng
0
Dream Song 125:" Bards freezing, naked, up to the neck in water"
eng
0
Dream Song 126: A Thurn
eng
0
Dream Song 127: Again, his friend`s death made the man sit still
eng
0
Dream Song 128: A hemorrhage of his left ear of Good Friday
eng
0
Dream Song 129: Thin as a sheet his mother came to him
eng
0
Dream Song 12: Sabbath
eng
0
Dream Song 130: When I saw my friend covered with blood, I thought
eng
0
Dream Song 131: Come touch me baby in his waking dream
eng
0
Dream Song 132: A Small Dream
eng
0
Dream Song 133: As he grew famous—ah, but what is fame?
eng
0
Dream Song 134: Sick at 6 & sick again at 9
eng
0
Dream Song 135: I heard said `Cats that walk by their wild lone`
eng
0
Dream Song 136: While his wife earned the living, Rabbi Henry
eng
0
Dream Song 13: God bless Henry
eng
0
Dream Song 15: Let us suppose, valleys & such ago
eng
0
Dream Song 16: Henry`s pelt was put on sundry walls
eng
0
Dream Song 176: All that hair flashing over
eng
0
Dream Song 17: Muttered Henry:—Lord of matter, thus
eng
0
Dream Song 18: A Strut for Roethke
eng
0
Dream Song 19
eng
0
Dream Song 1: Huffy Henry hid the day
eng
0
Dream Song 2
eng
0
Dream Song 20: The Secret of the Wisdom
eng
0
Dream Song 21: Some good people, daring & subtle voices
eng
0
Dream Song 224: Lonely in his great age
eng
0
Dream Song 22: Of 1826
eng
0
Dream Song 23: The Lay of Ike
eng
0
Dream Song 24: Oh servant Henry lectured till
eng
0
Dream Song 25: Henry, edged, decidedly, made up stories
eng
0
Dream Song 265: I don`t know one damned butterfly from another
eng
0
Dream Song 26: The glories of the world struck me
eng
0
Dream Song 27: "The greens of the Ganges delta foliate."
eng
0
Dream Song 28: Snow Line
eng
0
Dream Song 29: There sat down, once, a thing
eng
0
Dream Song 2: Big Buttons, Cornets: the advance
eng
0
Dream Song 30: "Collating bones: I would have liked to do"
eng
0
Dream Song 31: Henry Hankovitch, con guítar
eng
0
Dream Song 324
eng
0
Dream Song 32: And where, friend Quo, lay you hiding
eng
0
Dream Song 33: An apple arc`d toward Kleitos; whose great King
eng
0
Dream Song 34: My mother has your shotgun. One man, wide
eng
0
Dream Song 35: MLA
eng
0
Dream Song 36: The high ones die, die. They die
eng
0
Dream Song 37: Three around the Old Gentleman
eng
0
Dream Song 38: The Russian grin bellows his condolence
eng
0
Dream Song 39: Goodbye, sir, & fare well. You`re in the clear
eng
0
Dream Song 3: A Stimulant for an Old Beast
eng
0
Dream Song 40: I`m scared a lonely. Never see my son
eng
0
Dream Song 41: If we sang in the wood (and Death is a German expert)
eng
0
Dream Song 42: O journeyer, deaf in the mould, insane
eng
0
Dream Song 43: `Oyez, oyez!` The Man Who Did Not Deliver
eng
0
Dream Song 44: Tell it to the forest fire, tell it to the moon
eng
0
Dream Song 45: He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back
eng
0
Dream Song 46
eng
0
Dream Song 47: April Fool`s Day, or, St Mary of Egypt
eng
0
Dream Song 48: He yelled at me in Greek
eng
0
Dream Song 49: Blind
eng
0
Dream Song 4: Filling her compact & delicious body
eng
0
Dream Song 50: In a motion of night they massed nearer my post
eng
0
Dream Song 51: Our wounds to time, from all the other times
eng
0
Dream Song 52: Silent Song
eng
0
Dream Song 53: He lay in the middle of the world, and twicht
eng
0
Dream Song 54: `NO VISITORS` I thumb the roller to
eng
0
Dream Song 55: Peter`s not friendly. He gives me sideways looks
eng
0
Dream Song 56: Hell is empty. O that has come to pass
eng
0
Dream Song 57: In a state of chortle sin--once he reflected
eng
0
Dream Song 58: Industrious, affable, having brain on fire
eng
0
Dream Song 59: Henry`s Meditation in the Kremlin
eng
0
Dream Song 5: Henry sats in de bar & was odd
eng
0
Dream Song 60: Afters eight years, be less dan eight percent
eng
0
Dream Song 61: Full moon. Our Narragansett gales subside
eng
0
Dream Song 62: That dark brown rabbit, lightness in his ears
eng
0
Dream Song 63: Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
eng
0
Dream Song 64: Supreme my holdings, greater yet my need
eng
0
Dream Song 65: A freaking ankle crabbed his blissful trips
eng
0
Dream Song 66: `All virtues enter into this world:`)
eng
0
Dream Song 67: I don`t operate often. When I do
eng
0
Dream Song 68: I heard, could be, a Hey there from the wing
eng
0
Dream Song 69: Love her he doesn`t but the thought he puts
eng
0
Dream Song 6: A Capital at Wells
eng
0
Dream Song 70: Disengaged, bloody, Henry rose from the shell
eng
0
Dream Song 71: Spellbound held subtle Henry all his four
eng
0
Dream Song 72: The Elder Presences
eng
0
Dream Song 73: Karensui, Ryoan-ji
eng
0
Dream Song 75: Turning it over, considering
eng
0
Dream Song 76: Henry`s Confession
eng
0
Dream Song 77: Seedy Henry rose up shy
eng
0
Dream Song 78: Op. posth. no. 1
eng
0
Dream Song 79: Op. posth. no. 2
eng
0
Dream Song 7: `The Prisoner of Shark Island` with Paul Muni
eng
0
Dream Song 81: Op. posth. no. 4
eng
0
Dream Song 82: Op. posth. no. 5
eng
0
Dream Song 83: Op. posth. no. 6
eng
0
Dream Song 84: Op. posth. no. 7
eng
0
Dream Song 85: Op. posth. no. 8
eng
0
Dream Song 86: Op. posth. no. 9
eng
0
Dream Song 87: Op. posth. no. 10
eng
0
Dream Song 88: Op. posth. no. 11
eng
0
Dream Song 89: Op. posth. no. 12
eng
0
Dream Song 8: The weather was fine. They took away his teeth
eng
0
Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13
eng
0
Dream Song 91: Op. posth. no. 14
eng
0
Dream Song 92: Room 231: the fourth week
eng
0
Dream Song 93: General Fatigue stalked in, & a Major-General
eng
0
Dream Song 94: Ill lay he long, upon this last return
eng
0
Dream Song 95: The surly cop looked out at me in sleep
eng
0
Dream Song 96: Under the table, no. That last was stunning
eng
0
Dream Song 97: Henry of Donnybrook bred like a pig
eng
0
Dream Song 98: I met a junior--not so junior--and
eng
0
Dream Song 99: Temples
eng
0
Dream Song 9: Deprived of his enemy, shrugged to a standstill
eng
0
Epilogue
eng
0
Go, ill-sped book
eng
0
Keep your eyes open when you kiss
eng
0
Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying
eng
0
Sonnet 115 - All we were going strong last night this time
eng
0
The Curse
eng
0
The Traveller
eng
0

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