John Berryman : Collected Poems, 1937-1971

by Berryman; Thornbury

• ISBN13: 9780374522810
• ISBN10: 0374522812
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-08-01
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

This volume brings together all of Berryman's poetry, except for his epic "The Dream Songs, ranging from his earliest unpublished poem (1934) to those written in the last months of his life (1972). A definitive edition of one of America's most distinguished poets.

Author Biography

John Berryman was born in Oklahoma in 1914. The author of several volumes of poetry, of which The Dream Songs is considered his masterwork, he died, a suicide, in 1972.

Table of Contents

Editor's Note	p. xv
Abbreviations	p. xvi
Introduction	p. xvii
Chronology	p. lxi
The Dispossessed [1948]
Winter Landscape	p. 3
The Statue	p. 4
The Disciple	p. 5
A Point of Age	p. 7
The Traveller	p. 10
The Ball Poem	p. 11
Fare Well	p. 12
The Spinning Heart	p. 13
On the London Train	p. 14
Caravan	p. 15
The Possessed	p. 16
Parting as Descent	p. 17
Cloud and Flame	p. 18
Letter to His Brother	p. 19
Desires of Men and Women	p. 20
World-Telegram	p. 20
Conversation	p. 22
Ancestor	p. 23
World's Fair	p. 24
Travelling South	p. 25
At Chinese Checkers	p. 25
The Animal Trainer (1)	p. 30
The Animal Trainer (2)	p. 31
1 September 1939	p. 33
Desire Is a World by Night	p. 34
Farewell to Miles	p. 35
The Moon and the Night and the Men	p. 36
White Feather	p. 37
The Enemies of the Angels	p. 38
A Poem for Bhain	p. 40
Boston Common	p. 41
Canto Amor	p. 46
The Nervous Songs	p. 49
Young Woman's Song	p. 49
The Song of the Demented Priest	p. 49
The Song of the Young Hawaiian	p. 50
A Professor's Song	p. 51
The Captain's Song	p. 51
The Song of the Tortured Girl	p. 52
The Song of the Bridegroom	p. 52
Song of the Man Forsaken and Obsessed	p. 53
The Pacifist's Song	p. 54
Surviving Love	p. 54
The Lightning	p. 55
Rock-Study with Wanderer	p. 56
Whether There Is Sorrow in the Demons	p. 58
The Long Home	p. 59
A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away	p. 61
New Year's Eve	p. 63
Narcissus Moving	p. 65
The Dispossessed	p. 66
Sonnets to Chris [1947, 1966]
"I wished, all the mild days of middle March"	p. 71
"Your shining--where?--rays my wide room with gold"	p. 71
"Who for those ages ever without some blood"	p. 72
"Ah when you drift hover before you kiss"	p. 72
"The poet hunched, so, whom the worlds admire"	p. 73
"Rackman and victim twist: sounds all these weeks"	p. 73
"I've found out why, that day, that suicide"	p. 74
"College of cocktails, a few gentlemen"	p. 74
"Great citadels whereon the gold sun falls"	p. 75
"You in your stone home where the sycamore"	p. 75
"I expect you from the North. The path winds in"	p. 76
"Mutinous in the half-light, and malignant, grind"	p. 76
"I lift--lift you five States away your glass"	p. 77
"Moths white as ghosts among these hundreds cling"	p. 77
"What was Ashore, then? .. Cargoed with Forget"	p. 78
"Thrice, or I moved to sack, I saw you: how"	p. 78
"The Old Boys' blazers like a Mardi-Gras"	p. 79
"You, Chris, contrite I never thought to see"	p. 79
"You sailed in sky-high, with your speech askew"	p. 80
"Presidential flags! and the General is here"	p. 80
"Whom undone David upto the dire van sent"	p. 81
"If not white shorts--then in a princess gown"	p. 81
"They may, because I would not cloy your ear--"	p. 82
"Still it pleads and rankles: 'Why do you love me?'"	p. 82
"Sometimes the night echoes to prideless wailing"	p. 83
"Crouched on a ridge sloping to where you pour"	p. 83
"In a poem made by Cummings, long since, his"	p. 84
"A wasp skims nearby up the bright warm air"	p. 84
"The cold rewards trail in, when the man is blind"	p. 85
"Of all that weeks-long day, though call it back"	p. 85
"Troubling are masks .. the faces of friends, my face"	p. 86
"How shall I sing, western and dry and thin"	p. 86
"Audacities and fetes of the drunken weeks!"	p. 87
"'I couldn't leave you' you confessed next day."	p. 87
"Nothing there? nothing up the sky alive"	p. 88
"Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when"	p. 88
"Sigh as it ends .. I keep an eye on your"	p. 89
"Musculatures and skulls. Later some throng"	p. 89
"And does the old wound shudder open? Shall"	p. 90
"Marble nor monuments whereof then we spoke"	p. 90
"And Plough-month peters out .. its thermal power"	p. 91
"The clots of age, grovel and palsy, crave"	p. 91
"You should be gone in winter, that Nature mourn"	p. 92
"Bell to sore knees vestigial crowds, let crush"	p. 92
"Boy twenty-one, in Donne, shied like a blow"	p. 93
"Are we? You murmur 'not'. What of the night-"	p. 93
"How far upon these songs with my strict wrist"	p. 94
"I've met your friend at last, your violent friend"	p. 94
"One note, a daisy, and a photograph"	p. 95
"They come too thick, hail-hard, and all beside"	p. 95
"A tongue there is wags, down in the dark wood O"	p. 96
"A sullen brook hardly would satisfy"	p. 96
"Some sketch sweat' out, unwilling swift and crude"	p. 97
"It was the sky all day I grew to and saw."	p. 97
"When I recall I could believe you'd go"	p. 98
"Sunderings and luxations, luxe, and grief-"	p. 98
"Our love conducted as in tropic rain"	p. 99
"Sensible, coarse, and moral; in decent brown"	p. 99
"Loves are the summer's. Summer like a bee"	p. 100
"Today is it? Is it today? I shudder"	p. 100
"Languid the songs I wish I willed .. I try .."	p. 101
"Tyranny of your car--so far resembles"	p. 101
"Here too you came and sat a time once, drinking."	p. 102
"The dew is drying fast, a last drop glistens"	p. 102
"Once when they found me, some refrain 'Quoi faire?'"	p. 103
"Astronomies and slangs to find you, dear"	p. 103
"Faith like the warrior ant swarming, enslaving"	p. 104
"Where the lane from the highway swerves the first drops fell"	p. 104
"For you am I collared to quit my dear"	p. 105
"October's both, back in the Sooner State"	p. 105
"Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying"	p. 106
"A Cambridge friend put in,--one whom I used"	p. 106
"Demand me again what Kafka's riddles mean"	p. 107
"All I did wrong, all the Grand Guignol years"	p. 107
"Swarthy when young; who took the tonsure; sign"	p. 108
"The two plantations Greatgrandmother brought"	p. 108
"Fall and rise of her midriff bells. I watch."	p. 109
"On the wheat-sacks sullen with the ceaseless damp"	p. 109
"I dreamt he drove me back to the asylum"	p. 110
"Infallible symbolist!--Tanker driven ashore"	p. 110
"Four oval shadows, paired, ringed each by sun"	p. 111
"Why can't, Chris, why shouldn't they fall in love?"	p. 111
"Impossible to speak to her, and worse"	p. 112
"How shall I do, to pass the weary time"	p. 112
"Spendthrift Urethra--Sphincter, frugal one"	p. 113
"Our lives before hopelessly our mistake!"	p. 113
"Is it possible, poor kids, you must not come out?"	p. 114
"Anomalous I linger, and ignore"	p. 114
"'If long enough I sit here, she, she'll pass.'"	p. 115
"For you an idyl, was it not, so far"	p. 115
"Itself a lightning-flash ripping the 'dark"	p. 116
"What can to you this music wakes my years"	p. 116
"The man who made her let me climb the derrick"	p. 117
"Most strange, my change, this nervous interim.--"	p. 117
"'Old Smoky' when you sing with Robin, Chris"	p. 118
"It will seem strange, no more this range on range"	p. 118
"I say I laid siege--you enchanted me .."	p. 119
"Mallarme siren upside down,--rootedly!"	p. 119
"A murmuration of the shallow, Crane"	p. 120
"I am interested alone in making ready"	p. 120
"Because I'd seen you not believe your lover"	p. 121
"A penny, pity, for the runaway ass!"	p. 121
"A 'broken heart' .. but can a heart break, now?"	p. 122
"A spot of poontang on a five-foot piece"	p. 122
"Three, almost, now into the ass's years"	p. 123
"Began with swirling, blind, unstilled oh still"	p. 123
"Darling I wait O in my upstairs box"	p. 124
"I owe you, do I not, a roofer: though"	p. 124
"Menage a trois, like Tristan's,--difficult! .."	p. 125
"'Ring us up when you want to see us ...'--'Sure'"	p. 125
"Christian to Try: 'I am so coxed in it'"	p. 126
"I break my pace now for a sonic boom"	p. 126
"'I didn't see anyone else, I just saw Lies'"	p. 127
"You come blonde visiting through the black air"	p. 127
"As usual I'm up before the sun"	p. 128
"Outlaws claw mostly to a riddled end"	p. 128
"All we were going strong last night this time"	p. 129
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet [1953]	p. 131
from His Thought Made Pockets and the Plane Buckt [1958]
Venice, 182-	p. 151
Scots Poem	p. 151
The Mysteries	p. 152
They Have	p. 153
The Poet's Final Instructions	p. 154
from The Black Book (i)	p. 154
from The Black Book (ii)	p. 155
from The Black Book (iii)	p. 156
A Sympathy, A Welcome	p. 157
Not to Live	p. 157
American Lights, Seen From Off Abroad	p. 157
Note to Wang Wei	p. 159
Formal Elegy [1964]	p. 163
Love and Fame [1971]
Her and It	p. 169
Cadenza on Garnette	p. 169
Shirley and Auden	p. 170
Freshman Blues	p. 173
Images of Elspeth	p. 174
My Special Fate	p. 175
Drunks	p. 176
Down and Back	p. 176
Two Organs	p. 178
Olympus	p. 179
Nowhere	p. 180
In and Out	p. 182
The Heroes	p. 184
Crisis	p. 185
Recovery	p. 187
Away	p. 189
First Night at Sea	p. 190
London	p. 190
The Other Cambridge	p. 192
Friendless	p. 193
Monkhood	p. 194
Views of Myself	p. 196
Transit	p. 197
Meeting	p. 197
Tea	p. 198
The Search	p. 199
Message	p. 200
Relations	p. 201
Antitheses	p. 202
Have a Genuine American Horror-and-Mist on the Rocks	p. 203
To a Woman	p. 204
A Huddle of Need	p. 204
Damned	p. 205
Of Suicide	p. 206
Dante's Tomb	p. 207
Despair	p. 207
The Hell Poem	p. 208
Death Ballad	p. 209
'I Know'	p. 210
Purgatory	p. 211
Heaven	p. 212
The Home Ballad	p. 213
Eleven Addresses to the Lord
"Master of beauty"	p. 215
"Holy, as I suppose"	p. 216
"Sole watchman"	p. 217
"If I say Thy name"	p. 217
"Holy, and holy"	p. 218
"Under new management"	p. 219
"After a Stoic"	p. 219
A Prayer for the Self	p. 219
"Surprise me"	p. 220
"Fearful I peer"	p. 221
"Germanicus leapt"	p. 221
Delusions etc of John Berryman [1972]
Opus Dei
Lauds	p. 225
Matins	p. 226
Prime	p. 227
Interstitial Office	p. 228
Terce	p. 229
Sext	p. 230
Nones	p. 231
Vespers	p. 232
Compline	p. 234
Washington in Love	p. 235
Beethoven Triumphant	p. 236
Your Birthday in Wisconsin You Are 140	p. 242
Drugs Alcohol Little Sister	p. 243
In Memoriam (1914-1953)	p. 243
Gislebertus' Eve	p. 245
Scholars at the Orchid Pavilion	p. 246
Tampa Stomp	p. 247
Old Man Goes South Again Alone	p. 248
The Handshake, The Entrance	p. 248
Lines to Mr Frost	p. 249
He Resigns	p. 249
No	p. 250
The Form	p. 250
Ecce Homo	p. 251
A Prayer After All	p. 252
Back	p. 253
Hello	p. 253
Scherzo
Navajo Setting the Record Straight	p. 254
Henry By Night	p. 255
Henry's Understanding	p. 255
Defensio in Extremis	p. 256
Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up	p. 256
Somber Prayer	p. 257
Unknowable? perhaps not altogether	p. 258
Minnesota Thanksgiving	p. 258
A Usual Prayer	p. 259
Overseas Prayer	p. 259
Amos	p. 260
Certainty Before Lunch	p. 261
The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man	p. 261
'How Do You Do, Dr Berryman, Sir?'	p. 262
The Facts and Issues	p. 262
King David Dances	p. 263
Early Poems
from "Twenty Poems" in Five Young American Poets [1940]
Song from "Cleopatra"	p. 267
The Apparition	p. 268
Meditation	p. 269
Sanctuary	p. 271
The Trial	p. 272
Night and the City	p. 273
Nineteen Thirty-Eight	p. 274
The Curse	p. 275
Ceremony and Vision	p. 276
from Poems [1942]
The Dangerous Year	p. 278
River Rouge, 1932	p. 280
Communist	p. 280
Thanksgiving: Detroit	p. 281
Epilogue	p. 282
Appendices
Berryman's Published Prefaces, Notes, and Dedications	p. 285
Editor's Notes, Guidelines, and Procedures	p. 292
Copy-Texts and Variants	p. 300
Acknowledgments	p. 333
Index of Titles and First Lines	p. 337
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