The Dream Songs

2014-10-21 Poetry

Author : John Berryman
Release : 2014-10-21
Genre : Poetry
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 637/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Dream Songs by : John Berryman

Download or read book The Dream Songs written by John Berryman. This book was released on 2014-10-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete Dream Songs--hypnotic, seductive, masterful--as thrilling to read now as they ever were John Berryman's The Dream Songs are perhaps the funniest, saddest, most intricately wrought cycle of oems by an American in the twentieth century. They are also, more simply, the vibrantly sketched adventures of a uniquely American antihero named Henry. Henry falls in and out of love, and is in and out of the hospital; he sings of joy and desire, and of beings at odds with the world. He is lustful; he is depressed. And while Henry is breaking down and cracking up and patching himself together again, Berryman is doing the same thing to the English language, crafting electric verses that defy grammar but resound with an intuitive truth: "if he had a hundred years," Henry despairs in "Dream Song 29," "& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time / Henry could not make good." This volume collects both 77 Dream Songs, which won Berryman the Pulitzer Prize in 1965, and their continuation, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which was awarded the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize in 1969. The Dream Songs are witty and wild, an account of madness shot through with searing insight, winking word play, and moments of pure, soaring elation. This is a brilliantly sustained and profoundly moving performance that has not yet-and may never be-equaled.

Berryman's Henry

2006 Literary Criticism

Author : Samuel Fisher Dodson
Release : 2006
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 892/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Berryman's Henry by : Samuel Fisher Dodson

Download or read book Berryman's Henry written by Samuel Fisher Dodson. This book was released on 2006. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berryman's Henry: Living at the Intersection of Need and Art offers scholars and students the first thorough and well-researched vehicle into John Berryman's epic poem The Dream Songs. Through a close reading of the text, an examination of the history of its criticism and some of Berryman's letters, notes, and pertinent manuscripts, Sam Dodson offers the reader a solid starting point to appreciate the presiding structure and thematic focus of this American classic. This structure, resulting from the poet's crafting and the poem's internal growth, is illustrated in the text by more than thirty reproductions of some of the Dream Song drafts in progress. No existing critical work examines anywhere near the number of individual Dream Songs as this reader's guide, which will enable students and teachers to enter Berryman's difficult poem with confidence and a proper sense of direction. Its purpose is to provide the beginning reader and the scholar with a map for approaching this large work and finding their way through its elegiac structure and appreciating its unity. A close look at the poem's language and stylistic innovations, epic qualities and author's poetics, and most especially the elegiac movement of the poem, will allow even the novice reader to enter Henry's world. The elegies as a whole provide the note of mourning that is at the core of Berryman's epic.

Poems

2004

Author : John Berryman
Release : 2004
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 816/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Poems by : John Berryman

Download or read book Poems written by John Berryman. This book was released on 2004. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature. John Berryman (1914-72) was a poet from an immensely gifted generation of American poets that included Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell and Elizabeth Bishop. His long sequence The Dream Songs has become an enduring landmark in American poetry and a tribute to Berryman's own endurance in the face of alcoholism, depression and mental instability. In 1972 he leaped to his death from a bridge above the Mississippi River.

The Selected Letters of John Berryman

2020-10-13 Literary Collections

Author : John Berryman
Release : 2020-10-13
Genre : Literary Collections
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 258/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Selected Letters of John Berryman by : John Berryman

Download or read book The Selected Letters of John Berryman written by John Berryman. This book was released on 2020-10-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging, first-of-its-kind selection of Berryman’s correspondence with friends, loved ones, writers, and editors, showcasing the turbulent, fascinating life and mind of one of America’s major poets. The Selected Letters of John Berryman assembles for the first time the poet’s voluminous correspondence. Beginning with a letter to his parents in 1925 and concluding with a letter sent a few weeks before his death in 1972, Berryman tells his story in his own words. Included are more than 600 letters to almost 200 people—editors, family members, students, colleagues, and friends. The exchanges reveal the scope of Berryman’s ambitions, as well as the challenges of practicing his art within the confines of the publishing industry and contemporary critical expectations. Correspondence with Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz, Adrienne Rich, Saul Bellow, and other writers demonstrates Berryman’s sustained involvement in the development of literary culture in the postwar United States. We also see Berryman responding in detail to the work of writers such as Carolyn Kizer and William Meredith and encouraging the next generation—Edward Hoagland, Valerie Trueblood, and others. The letters show Berryman to be an energetic and generous interlocutor, but they also make plain his struggles with personal and familial trauma, at every stage of his career. An introduction by editors Philip Coleman and Calista McRae explains the careful selection of letters and contextualizes the materials within Berryman’s career. Reinforcing the critical and creative interconnectedness of Berryman’s work and personal life, The Selected Letters confirms his place as one of the most original voices of his generation and opens new horizons for appreciating and interpreting his poems.

Henry's Fate & Other Poems, 1967-1972

1977 Poetry

Author : John Berryman
Release : 1977
Genre : Poetry
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 500/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Henry's Fate & Other Poems, 1967-1972 by : John Berryman

Download or read book Henry's Fate & Other Poems, 1967-1972 written by John Berryman. This book was released on 1977. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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