77 Dream Songs
by John Berryman
On This Page
Description
A wild, masterful cycle of poems that half a century later still shocks and astounds. As Henri Cole notes in his elegant, perceptive introduction, Berryman had discovered "a looser style that mixed high and low dictions with a strange syntax." Berryman had also discovered his most enduring alter ego, a paranoid, passionate, depressed, drunk, irrepressible antihero named Henry or, sometimes, Mr. Bones: "We touch at certain points," Berryman claimed, of Henry, "But I am an actual human being." show more Henry may not be real, but he comes alive on the page. And, while the most famous of the Dream Songs begins, "Life, friends, is boring," these poems never are. Henry lusts: seeing a woman "Filling her compact & delicious body / with chicken páprika" he can barely restrain himself: "only the fact of her husband & four other people / kept me from springing on her." Henry despairs: "All the world like a woolen lover / once did seem on Henry's side. / Then came a departure." Henry, afraid of his own violent urges, consoles himself: "Nobody is ever missing.". show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Dated 4/2/70 in pencil on the title page,this is one of the first book of poems I ever bought. Yellow pages, coffee stains, lots of wear. This book opened up a new world for me. The opening still resonates:
Huffy Henry hid the day
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,--a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked and away.
But he should have come out and talked.
*****
The Mr Bones device is one of the weirdest ways of wrestling with racism ever. In the preliminary note, JB wrote, "Many opinions and errors in the Songs are to be referred not to the character of Henry, still less to the author, but to the title of the work."
Huffy Henry hid the day
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,--a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked and away.
But he should have come out and talked.
*****
The Mr Bones device is one of the weirdest ways of wrestling with racism ever. In the preliminary note, JB wrote, "Many opinions and errors in the Songs are to be referred not to the character of Henry, still less to the author, but to the title of the work."
My reading of poetry tends to be unsophisticated: I read it before I go to sleep, but I've read enough modernist stuff closely enough that I have little to no patience for those who just want to write straightforward, formless verse, i.e., almost everything that people write these days.
Berryman hits the sweet spot: I don't feel like I need a guidebook to these poems, but I also feel like he's a very intelligent man. The distancing mechanisms help a lot, as does the fun way he completely disregards any consistency in first vs third person. But mainly, these are beautifully formed poems that do just enough intellectually to keep me interested. Will I trawl through the rest of the Dream Songs? Well, 77 was a good number for one book. 308 show more might be a couple of hundred too many for one sitting. show less
Berryman hits the sweet spot: I don't feel like I need a guidebook to these poems, but I also feel like he's a very intelligent man. The distancing mechanisms help a lot, as does the fun way he completely disregards any consistency in first vs third person. But mainly, these are beautifully formed poems that do just enough intellectually to keep me interested. Will I trawl through the rest of the Dream Songs? Well, 77 was a good number for one book. 308 show more might be a couple of hundred too many for one sitting. show less
I really wanted to like this, I find so little post-World War II American poetry that does resonate with me. for me, Berryman is no Delmore Schwartz or Bukowski. I guess his turbulent life interests me more than thus, his famous Pulitzer - winning cycle which strikes me as the draft of poems.
I felt very little connection.
Immaculate conception-
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Published Reviews
ThingScore 75
Groups of John Berryman's Dream Songs have been coming out in magazines for the last five years. They have been talked about, worried over, denounced, adored. They are puzzling, not quite intelligible—and beyond a doubt fun to read or hear. When they don't make you cry—these poems will make you laugh. And that is news.
added by jburlinson
Author Information
36+ Works 2,771 Members
John Berryman's poetry has a depth and obscurity that discourages many readers while it entices critics. His major work, The Dream Songs (1969), forms a poetic notebook that captures the ephemera of mood and attitude of this most mercurial of poets. Born John Smith in McAlester, Oklahoma, in 1914 and educated at Columbia University and Clare show more College, Cambridge, he later taught at several universities. Berryman received the Shelley Memorial Award (1948), the Harriet Monroe Award (1957), the Loines Award for poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1964), and the fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (1966). In 1964 he won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for 77 Dream Songs (1964). His short story "The Imaginary Jew" received the Kenyon-Doubleday Award and was listed in Best American Short Stories, (1946). He also wrote Stephen Crane (1950) and is the author of a novel, Recovery (1973). Often listed along with Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton as a major confessional poet, he was as much concerned with literary artifice as he was with personal revelation. His works include The Freedom of the Poet, Henry's Fate & Other Poems, 1967-1972, Collected Poems 1937-1971, Berryman's Shakespeare, and Selected Poems. Berryman committed suicide in 1972. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Distinctions
Notable Lists
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 249
- Popularity
- 129,747
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.45)
- Languages
- English, Portuguese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 6
