John Berryman Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Editor’s Note

  Abbreviations

  Introduction

  Chronology

  THE DISPOSSESSED [1948]

  I

  Winter Landscape

  The Statue

  The Disciple

  A Point of Age

  The Traveller

  The Ball Poem

  Fare Well

  II

  The Spinning Heart

  On the London Train

  Caravan

  The Possessed

  Parting as Descent

  Cloud and Flame

  Letter to His Brother

  Desires of Men and Women

  World-Telegram

  Conversation

  Ancestor

  World’s Fair

  Travelling South

  At Chinese Checkers

  The Animal Trainer (1)

  The Animal Trainer (2)

  III

  1 September 1939

  Desire Is a World by Night

  Farewell to Miles

  The Moon and the Night and the Men

  White Feather

  The Enemies of the Angels

  A Poem for Bhain

  Boston Common

  IV

  Canto Amor

  The Nervous Songs

  Young Woman’s Song

  The Song of the Demented Priest

  The Song of the Young Hawaiian

  A Professor’s Song

  The Captain’s Song

  The Song of the Tortured Girl

  The Song of the Bridegroom

  Song of the Man Forsaken and Obsessed

  The Pacifist’s Song

  Surviving Love

  The Lightning

  V

  Rock-Study with Wanderer

  Whether There Is Sorrow in the Demons

  The Long Home

  A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away

  New Year’s Eve

  Narcissus Moving

  The Dispossessed

  SONNETS TO CHRIS [1947, 1966]

  1. “I wished, all the mild days of middle March”

  2. “Your shining—where?—rays my wide room with gold”

  3. “Who for those ages ever without some blood”

  4. “Ah when you drift hover before you kiss”

  5. “The poet hunched, so, whom the worlds admire”

  6. “Rackman and victim twist: sounds all these weeks”

  7. “I’ve found out why, that day, that suicide”

  8. “College of cocktails, a few gentlemen”

  9. “Great citadels whereon the gold sun falls”

  10. “You in your stone home where the sycamore”

  11. “I expect you from the North. The path winds in”

  12. “Mutinous in the half-light, & malignant, grind”

  13. “I lift—lift you five States away your glass”

  14. “Moths white as ghosts among these hundreds cling”

  15. “What was Ashore, then? . . Cargoed with Forget”

  16. “Thrice, or I moved to sack, I saw you: how”

  17. “The Old Boys’ blazers like a Mardi-Gras”

  18. “You, Chris, contrite I never thought to see”

  19. “You sailed in sky-high, with your speech askew”

  20. “Presidential flags! and the General is here”

  21. “Whom undone David upto the dire van sent”

  22. “If not white shorts—then in a princess gown”

  23. “They may, because I would not cloy your ear—”

  24. “Still it pleads and rankles: ‘Why do you love me?’”

  25. “Sometimes the night echoes to prideless wailing”

  26. “Crouched on a ridge sloping to where you pour”

  27. “In a poem made by Cummings, long since, his”

  28. “A wasp skims nearby up the bright warm air”

  29. “The cold rewards trail in, when the man is blind”

  30. “Of all that weeks-long day, though call it back”

  31. “Troubling are masks . . the faces of friends, my face”

  32. “How shall I sing, western & dry & thin”

  33. “Audacities and fêtes of the drunken weeks!”

  34. “‘I couldn’t leave you’ you confessed next day.”

  35. “Nothing there? nothing up the sky alive”

  36. “Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when”

  37. “Sigh as it ends . . I keep an eye on your”

  38. “Musculatures and skulls. Later some throng”

  39. “And does the old wound shudder open? Shall”

  40. “Marble nor monuments whereof then we spoke”

  41. “And Plough-month peters out . . its thermal power”

  42. “The clots of age, grovel and palsy, crave”

  43. “You should be gone in winter, that Nature mourn”

  44. “Bell to sore knees vestigial crowds, let crush”

  45. “Boy twenty-one, in Donne, shied like a blow”

  46. “Are we? You murmur ‘not’. What of the night-”

  47. “How far upon these songs with my strict wrist”

  48. “I’ve met your friend at last, your violent friend”

  49. “One note, a daisy, and a photograph”

  50. “They come too thick, hail-hard, and all beside”

  51. “A tongue there is wags, down in the dark wood O”

  52. “A sullen brook hardly would satisfy”

  53. “Some sketch sweat’ out, unwilling swift & crude”

  54. “It was the sky all day I grew to and saw.”

  55. “When I recall I could believe you’d go”

  56. “Sunderings and luxations, luxe, and grief-”

  57. “Our love conducted as in tropic rain”

  58. “Sensible, coarse, and moral; in decent brown”

  59. “Loves are the summer’s. Summer like a bee”

  60. “Today is it? Is it today? I shudder”

  61. “Languid the songs I wish I willed . . I try . .”

  62. “Tyranny of your car—so far resembles”

  63. “Here too you came and sat a time once, drinking.”

  64. “The dew is drying fast, a last drop glistens”

  65. “Once when they found me, some refrain ‘Quoi faire?’”

  66. “Astronomies and slangs to find you, dear”

  67. “Faith like the warrior ant swarming, enslaving”

  68. “Where the lane from the highway swerves the first drops fell”

  69. “For you am I collared to quit my dear”

  70. “October’s both, back in the Sooner State”

  71. “Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying”

  72. “A Cambridge friend put in,—one whom I used”

  73. “Demand me again what Kafka’s riddles mean”

  74. “All I did wrong, all the Grand Guignol years”

  75. “Swarthy when young; who took the tonsure; sign”

  76. “The two plantations Greatgrandmother brought”

  77. “Fall and rise of her midriff bells. I watch.”

  78. “On the wheat-sacks sullen with the ceaseless damp”

  79. “I dreamt he drove me back to the asylum”

  80. “Infallible symbolist!—Tanker driven ashore”

  81. “Four oval shadows, paired, ringed
each by sun”

  82. “Why can’t, Chris, why shouldn’t they fall in love?”

  83. “Impossible to speak to her, and worse”

  84. “How shall I do, to pass the weary time”

  85. “Spendthrift Urethra—Sphincter, frugal one”

  86. “Our lives before hopelessly our mistake!”

  87. “Is it possible, poor kids, you must not come out?”

  88. “Anomalous I linger, and ignore”

  89. “‘If long enough I sit here, she, she’ll pass.’”

  90. “For you an idyl, was it not, so far”

  91. “Itself a lightning-flash ripping the ‘dark”

  92. “What can to you this music wakes my years”

  93. “The man who made her let me climb the derrick”

  94. “Most strange, my change, this nervous interim.—”

  95. “‘Old Smoky’ when you sing with Robin, Chris”

  96. “It will seem strange, no more this range on range”

  97. “I say I laid siege—you enchanted me . .”

  98. “Mallarmé siren upside down,—rootedly!”

  99. “A murmuration of the shallow, Crane”

  100. “I am interested alone in making ready”

  101. “Because I’d seen you not believe your lover”

  102. “A penny, pity, for the runaway ass!”

  103. “A ‘broken heart’ . . but can a heart break, now?”

  104. “A spot of poontang on a five-foot piece”

  105. “Three, almost, now into the ass’s years”

  106. “Began with swirling, blind, unstilled oh still”

  107. “Darling I wait O in my upstairs box”

  108. “I owe you, do I not, a roofer: though”

  109. “Ménage à trois, like Tristan’s,—difficult! . .”

  110. “‘Ring us up when you want to see us …’—‘Sure’”

  111. “Christian to Try: ‘I am so coxed in it’”

  112. “I break my pace now for a sonic boom”

  113. “‘I didn’t see anyone else, I just saw Lies’”

  114. “You come blonde visiting through the black air”

  115. “As usual I’m up before the sun”

  116. “Outlaws claw mostly to a riddled end”

  117. “All we were going strong last night this time”

  HOMAGE TO MISTRESS BRADSTREET [1953]

  from HIS THOUGHT MADE POCKETS & THE PLANE BUCKT [1958]

  Venice, 182-

  Scots Poem

  The Mysteries

  They Have

  The Poet’s Final Instructions

  from The Black Book (i)

  from The Black Book (ii)

  from The Black Book (iii)

  A Sympathy, A Welcome

  Not to Live

  American Lights, Seen From Off Abroad

  Note to Wang Wei

  Formal Elegy [1964]

  LOVE & FAME [1971]

  I

  Her & It

  Cadenza on Garnette

  Shirley & Auden

  Freshman Blues

  Images of Elspeth

  My Special Fate

  Drunks

  Down & Back

  Two Organs

  Olympus

  Nowhere

  In & Out

  The Heroes

  Crisis

  Recovery

  II

  Away

  First Night at Sea

  London

  The Other Cambridge

  Friendless

  Monkhood

  Views of Myself

  Transit

  Meeting

  Tea

  III

  The Search

  Message

  Relations

  Antitheses

  Have a Genuine American Horror-&-Mist on the Rocks

  To a Woman

  A Huddle of Need

  Damned

  Of Suicide

  Dante’s Tomb

  Despair

  The Hell Poem

  Death Ballad

  ‘I Know’

  Purgatory

  Heaven

  The Home Ballad

  IV

  Eleven Addresses to the Lord

  1. “Master of beauty”

  2. “Holy, as I suppose”

  3. “Sole watchman”

  4. “If I say Thy name”

  5. “Holy, & holy”

  6. “Under new management”

  7. “After a Stoic”

  8. A Prayer for the Self

  9. “Surprise me”

  10. “Fearful I peer”

  11. “Germanicus leapt”

  DELUSIONS etc of John Berryman [1972]

  I. OPUS DEI

  Lauds

  Matins

  Prime

  Interstitial Office

  Terce

  Sext

  Nones

  Vespers

  Compline

  II

  Washington in Love

  Beethoven Triumphant

  Your Birthday in Wisconsin You Are

  Drugs Alcohol Little Sister

  In Memoriam (1914–1953)

  III

  Gislebertus’ Eve

  Scholars at the Orchid Pavilion

  Tampa Stomp

  Old Man Goes South Again Alone

  The Handshake, The Entrance

  Lines to Mr Frost

  He Resigns

  No

  The Form

  Ecce Homo

  A Prayer After All

  Back

  Hello

  IV. SCHERZO

  Navajo Setting the Record Straight

  Henry By Night

  Henry’s Understanding

  Defensio in Extremis

  Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up

  V

  Somber Prayer

  Unknowable? perhaps not altogether

  Minnesota Thanksgiving

  A Usual Prayer

  Overseas Prayer

  Amos

  Certainty Before Lunch

  The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man

  ‘How Do You Do, Dr Berryman, Sir?’

  The Facts & Issues

  King David Dances

  EARLY POEMS

  from “TWENTY POEMS” in FIVE YOUNG AMERICAN POETS [1940]

  Song from “Cleopatra”

  The Apparition

  Meditation

  Sanctuary

  The Trial

  Night and the City

  Nineteen Thirty-Eight

  The Curse

  Ceremony and Vision

  from POEMS [1942]

  The Dangerous Year

  River Rouge, 1932

  Communist

  Thanksgiving: Detroit

  Epilogue

  APPENDICES

  Berryman’s Published Prefaces, Notes, and Dedications

  Editor’s Notes, Guidelines, and Procedures

  Copy-Texts and Variants

  Acknowledgments

  Index of Titles and First Lines

  Copyright

  Editor’s Note

  Collected Poems 1937–1971 brings together for the first time John Berryman’s seven collections of short poems. This new edition incorporates only the collections he published and includes as well Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, one of his two long poems. The inclusive dates, 1937 to 1971, correspond to the dates of composition of the earliest and latest poems rather than the dates of the publication of his collections. Henry’s Fate and Other Poems (1976) is not collected here because Berryman himself did not select and arrange the volume; The Dream Songs (1969), a self-contained major work, will continue to be published as a separate volume.

  As editor of Collected Poems 1937–1971, my job was determined by the kind of edition the publisher requested—one that was general rather than exclusively scholarly. The complete history of the changes and transmissions of each collection and poem, for example, was not to
be documented. Nevertheless, since my duty was to present an accurate text—believing the general reader is as interested in having an accurate text as the scholarly one—it was agreed that I would document all instances where I chose a reading different from that of the published first or revised edition of each collection.

  The Editor’s Notes, Guidelines, and Procedures, and the Copy-Texts and Variants trace the historical embodiments of Berryman’s published texts and describe the nature of the textual problems his manuscripts, corrected galleys, and page proofs present. The Copy-Texts and Variants notes, less interpretive than factual, show how the texts for Collected Poems were established. My Introduction is addressed to both new and experienced readers of Berryman’s poetry. It is arranged in nine parts: the first five present an overview of major themes in Berryman’s life and work; the last four inquire into his poetics.

  Abbreviations

  WORKS BY BERRYMAN

  20P

  “Twenty Poems” in Five Young American Poets

  Poems

  Poems

  TD

  The Dispossessed

  Sonnets

  Sonnets to Chris

  Homage

  Homage to Mistress Bradstreet

  HomageAOP

  Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and Other Poems

  Thoughts

  His Thought Made Pockets & the Plane Buckt

  L&F

  Love & Fame

  De

  Delusions etc of John Berryman

  CP

  Collected Poems 1937–1971

  PUBLISHERS AND MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

  FF

  Faber and Faber, Ltd. (London, England)

  FSG

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York City)

  JBP

  John Berryman Papers, University of Minnesota Libraries

  OTHER ABBREVIATIONS

  CTS

  Carbon typescript

  HW

  Handwritten

  MS

  Manuscript

  TS

  Ribbon typescript

  Introduction

  Wary readers of John Berryman’s poetry, the kind he respected most because they ask hard questions, find themselves in the best company. Elizabeth Bishop wrote to Robert Lowell in 1956 that she “couldn’t make up” her mind about the merits of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet. Eleven years later, she was no less baffled by Berryman’s Sonnets when she wrote to Lowell: “I have been struggling with those sonnets—many beautiful lines but I do find him difficult.” Her bafflement, nevertheless, did not diminish her sense of the penetrating power of Berryman’s poetry: “One has the feeling a 100 years from now,” she wrote to Lowell in 1962, “that he may be all the rage—or a ‘discovery’—hasn’t one?” Three months after Berryman’s death, in January 1972, Lowell recalled his moments of uncertainty in hearing Berryman’s voice: