W. S. Merwin (top) & John Berryman |
Berryman
by W. S. Merwin
I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war
don’t lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you’re older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity
just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally
it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England
as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry
he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t
you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write
Small typing error at the end of the third paragraph above — should say "at Thomas's <i>bedside</i>…"
I can't say I've ever had a great affinity for Berryman's poetry, though I do read him from time to time.<br /><br />A few years back I read Eileen Simpson's book <i>Poets in Their Youth</i>, her memoir of John Berryman (she was his first wife) and their friends in the poetry world. The book covers roughly the time of their marriage (late 1940's) through the end of their
yes. and yes. As: <br />I tend towards <br />thinking (that)<br />the image/poem<br />is<br />in the poet/artist,<br />not he in it:<br /><br />though to 'spit-it-out'<br />as the piece its Self<br />demands<br /> from: His Toy, His Dream, His Rest<br />236<br /><br />When Henry swung, in that great open square,<br />the crowd was immense, the little clouds were white<br />and it
You're both right, I think. Berryman's academic writing is fresh and adventurous in some ways, and his prose style shares some of the qualities of his verse, but the content doesn't enter into his poetry. I never thought of it before, but Lowell, who was no academic, is more academic in his poetry than Berryman. Hmmmm.
Conrad's right on Berryman here.
Berryman's one of those exceptionally rare individuals who could be both an academic and a poet at the same time. The two never mixed. He might as well have been an insurance executive. His are among the most mind-blowing verses I've ever read. A great talent and I don't mind saying I've taken my cue from in a few places.