John Berryman Read online

  1944 Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship (1944–45, renewed for 1945–46) to work on a critical edition of the text of King Lear. Meets Robert Lowell and Jean Stafford.

  1945 First recording of his poetry for Library of Congress. Publishes short stories “The Lovers” and “The Imaginary Jew” in The Kenyon Review; the latter is awarded the Kenyon Review–Doubleday Doran prize; publishes essay-review on Henry James.

  1946 Associate in Creative Writing at Princeton (W. S. Merwin is one of his students); publishes essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  1947 First infidelity, an account of which is recorded in Sonnets to Chris (published as Berryman’s Sonnets in 1967). Publishes reviews “Lowell, Thomas, & Co.” and “Nightingale of the Mire” on a translation of Tristan Corbière’s poems. Meets T. S. Eliot. Begins psychoanalysis.

  1948 Resident Fellow in Creative Writing (through spring 1949) at Princeton; first major collection of poems, The Dispossessed; Shelley Memorial Award (Poetry Society of America) for The Dispossessed. Meets Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C.; meets Saul Bellow. Has several more affairs (and a number of others throughout the 1950s). Publishes “Waiting for the End Boys,” a poetry chronicle and omnibus review of poetry in 1947, and “The State of American Writing, 1948: Seven Questions”; writes first stanzas of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet; begins sequence of poems, The Black Book, which was to be a “Mass for the Dead,” about the Nazi murders of the Jews especially in Warsaw (unfinished).

  1949 Guarantors Prize (Poetry). Involved in publicly defending Pound’s being awarded the Bollingen Prize for the Pisan Cantos. Publishes essay “The Poetry of Ezra Pound.”

  1950 Publishes Stephen Crane, a biographical and psychological study of Crane’s life and poetry. American Academy award for poetry and Stephen Crane; National Institute of Arts and Letters Award; Levinson Prize (Poetry). Alfred Hodder Fellow at Princeton (1950–51); lecturer for one term at University of Washington, Seattle. Meets Randall Jarrell.

  1951 Delivers lectures at Princeton on his critical and textual research on Shakespeare; works on play Mirabeau (never completed, nor were Architect and Dictator in the 1940s); publishes essay “Through Dreiser’s Imagination the Tides of Real Life Billowed.”

  1952 Elliston Lecturer on Poetry, University of Cincinnati (spring term): conducts a poetry workshop, gives ten lectures on modern poetry and seven on Shakespeare’s poetry and plays. Publishes introduction to M. G. Lewis’s The Monk. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing and research on Shakespeare. Resumes work on Homage; writes essay “Marlowe’s Damnations” and signs contract with Viking to write a critical study of Shakespeare (not completed).

  1953 Completes Homage to Mistress Bradstreet in an intense three-month period; first public reading of Homage at Princeton. Travels to Europe with Eileen; meets Louis MacNeice and Theodore Roethke; returns to New York City. He and Eileen separate. Publishes Homage in Partisan Review; publishes essay “Shakespeare at Thirty.” Dylan Thomas dies at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York while Berryman stands outside his room. Publishes review of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March.

  1954 Lecturer in poetry in Writers’ Workshop at State University of Iowa (Iowa City), spring term (his students include W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, Philip Levine, Jane Cooper, and Henri Coulette); studies Hebrew; teaches summer term at Harvard, courses on Shakespeare and fiction; returns to University of Iowa for fall term but is dismissed when he is arrested for intoxication, profanity, and disturbing the peace. Allen Tate assists in move to Minneapolis, Minnesota, about thirty miles from father’s birthplace. Intensive period of dream analysis (over 130 of his dreams, which he considers publishing as St. Pancras Braser).

  1955 Appointed lecturer in Humanities (Ralph Ross chairs the department and becomes a close friend) at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, which becomes his home for the rest of his life; his courses include readings from the Gospels, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Cervantes, Luther, Freud, and Lenin. Research on Shakespeare’s Friend (the possible collaboration between Shakespeare and William Haughton). Begins writing Dream Songs at the end of the year.

  1956 Divorces Eileen December 19 and marries Elizabeth Ann Levine, twenty-four, a week later. Signs contract with Farrar, Straus for a book on Shakespeare (never completed); publishes Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, with drawings by Ben Shahn, as a book—nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Partisan Review Rockefeller Fellowship for poetry (for 1957). Renews friendship with Saul Bellow, who is teaching at the University of Minnesota. Publishes “The Case of Ring Lardner”; translates Paul Claudel’s “Le Chemin de la Croix” for Antal Dorati’s musical composition Cantata Dramatica (not used by Dorati but later performed in 1959 as “The Way of the Cross”).

  1957 Harriet Monroe Poetry Prize (University of Chicago) for Homage. Son Paul born March 5. Promoted to Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies (with tenure in Humanities and English) at University of Minnesota. Sent to India in the summer by the United States Information Service (State Department) to give twenty-six lectures on American literature at fourteen universities (also visits Japan). Joins Ann and Paul in Italy; family stays in Spain for several months. Writes essay on Whitman, “‘Song of Myself’: Intention and Substance.”

  1958 Publishes His Thought Made Pockets & the Plane Buckt, a chapbook of poems; works on Shakespeare Handbook, commissioned by T. Y. Crowell but never completed; writes essays on individual works of Babel, Shakespeare, Stephen Crane, Hemingway, and Eliot for Arts of Reading; begins developing plans for The Dream Songs. Admitted to Regent Hospital in New York City for exhaustion. Ann leaves with son, Paul.

  1959 Publishes first book of poems in England, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and Other Poems. Admitted to Glenwood Hills Hospital, Minneapolis, for exhaustion and alcoholism (from 1959 to the end of his life, Berryman is admitted to hospitals almost annually—sometimes more frequently—for alcoholism and nervous exhaustion). Divorced from Ann on April 28. Publishes “From the Middle to the Senior Generations,” a review of poems by Roethke, Shapiro, Cummings, and Williams; teaches at University of Utah in June; publishes first Dream Songs.

  1960 Visiting lecturer, University of California (Berkeley), Department of Speech, spring term. Receives Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. Publishes The Arts of Reading, an anthology with commentary by Ralph Ross, Allen Tate, and Berryman, and introduction to Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.

  1961 Meets Kathleen (“Kate”) Donahue, twenty-two, in spring. Teaches in the summer at Indiana School of Letters. Marries Kate on September 1. Writes essay on Don Quixote, “The Freedom of the Don” and the first draft of “The Development of Anne Frank.”

  1962 Teaches in the summer at Bread Loaf School of English, Vermont—courses on the fiction of Henry James and Stephen Crane and “Deep Form in Minor and Major Poetry”—where he renews his friendship with William Meredith and visits Robert Frost; Writer-in-Residence, Brown University, September through spring 1963. Writes essay on The Tempest, “Shakespeare’s Last Word.” First daughter, Martha (“Twissy”), born December 1.

  1963 Family vacations in rural Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. Receives award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation.

  1964 77 Dream Songs (the first three parts of The Dream Songs). Russell Loines Award (National Institute of Arts and Letters). He and Kate buy, in Minneapolis, the first and only house he would own.

  1965 Pulitzer Prize for 77 Dream Songs. Publishes afterword to The Titan by Theodore Dreiser.

  1966 Guggenheim Fellowship for 1966–67 to complete The Dream Songs. Lives with his family in Dublin, Ireland, from September to June 1967; drinks heavily; visits England, the Continent, and Greece.

  1967 Publishes Berryman’s Sonnets and Short Poems. Receives Academy of American Poets and National Endowment for the Arts award for “distinguished service to American letters.” Admitted to Abbott Hospital in Minneapolis for alcohol treatment.

  1968 Publishes His T
oy, His Dream, His Rest, the concluding four parts of The Dream Songs.

  1969 National Book Award and Bollingen Prize for His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Publishes the complete The Dream Songs. Appointed Regents’ Professor of Humanities, University of Minnesota. Admitted to Hazelden Center in Minneapolis for alcoholic rehabilitation for five weeks.

  1970 Resumes work on his critical biography of Shakespeare (early drafts begun in 1951); begins writing Love & Fame in early February and by the end of the month is in the hospital for intoxication; second rehabilitation treatment at St. Mary’s Intensive Alcohol Treatment Center in Minneapolis in early May. On May 12 undergoes “a sort of religious conversion” and recovers a sense of a “God of rescue.” Holiday trip with family to Mexico. Readmitted to St. Mary’s for third alcoholic treatment (October through November). Considers converting to Judaism but becomes a professed Catholic; joins Alcoholics Anonymous. Publishes Love & Fame.

  1971 Works on Recovery, a thinly disguised autobiographical novel about alcoholic rehabilitation. Receives honorary doctorate from Drake University (Iowa). Mother moves to Minneapolis in May; second daughter, Sarah Rebecca, born June 13; holiday trip to Colorado with daughter Martha and son, Paul. Senior Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities to work on a biography of Shakespeare; Love & Fame (revised British edition) published; sends manuscript of Delusions etc of John Berryman to Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

  1972 Leaps to his death on the morning of January 7 from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, landing on the embankment of the west side of the Mississippi River; given a Catholic funeral and buried in Resurrection Cemetery, Mendota Heights, St. Paul, Minnesota.

  POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS

  1972 Delusions Etc.

  1973 Recovery (unfinished novel), foreword by Saul Bellow.

  1976 The Freedom of the Poet (essays and short stories), edited and with a preface by Robert Giroux.

  1977 Henry’s Fate & Other Poems (1967–1972), selected and introduced by John Haffenden.

  1988 We Dream of Honour: John Berryman’s Letters to His Mother, selected and introduced by Richard J. Kelly.

  THE DISPOSSESSED

  [1948]

  I

  Winter Landscape

  The three men coming down the winter hill

  In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds

  At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,

  Past the five figures at the burning straw,

  Returning cold and silent to their town,

  Returning to the drifted snow, the rink

  Lively with children, to the older men,

  The long companions they can never reach,

  The blue light, men with ladders, by the church

  The sledge and shadow in the twilit street,

  Are not aware that in the sandy time

  To come, the evil waste of history

  Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow

  Of that same hill: when all their company

  Will have been irrecoverably lost,

  These men, this particular three in brown

  Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say

  By their configuration with the trees,

  The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,

  What place, what time, what morning occasion

  Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds

  At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,

  Thence to return as now we see them and

  Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill

  Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.

  The Statue

  The statue, tolerant through years of weather,

  Spares the untidy Sunday throng its look,

  Spares shopgirls knowledge of the fatal pallor

  Under their evening colour,

  Spares homosexuals, the crippled, the alone,

  Extravagant perception of their failure;

  Looks only, cynical, across them all

  To the delightful Avenue and its lights.

  Where I sit, near the entrance to the Park,

  The charming dangerous entrance to their need,

  Dozens, a hundred men have lain till morning

  And the preservative darkness waning,

  Waking to want, to the day before, desire

  For the ultimate good, Respect, to hunger waking;

  Like the statue ruined but without its eyes;

  Turned vaguely out at dawn for a new day.

  Fountains I hear behind me on the left,

  See green, see natural life springing in May

  To spend its summer sheltering our lovers,

  Those walks so shortly to be over.

  The sound of water cannot startle them

  Although their happiness runs out like water,

  Of too much sweetness the expected drain.

  They trust their Spring; they have not seen the statue.

  Disfigurement is general. Nevertheless

  Winters have not been able to alter its pride,

  If that expression is a pride remaining,

  Coriolanus and Rome burning,

  An aristocracy that moves no more.

  Scholars can stay their pity; from the ceiling

  Watch blasted and superb inhabitants,

  The wreck and justifying ruined stare.

  Since graduating from its years of flesh

  The name has faded in the public mind

  Or doubled: which is this? the elder? younger?

  The statesman or the traveller?

  Who first died or who edited his works,

  The lonely brother bound to remain longer

  By a quarter-century than the first-born

  Of that illustrious and lost family?

  The lovers pass. Not one of them can know

  Or care which Humboldt is immortalized.

  If they glance up, they glance in passing,

  An idle outcome of that pacing

  That never stops, and proves them animal;

  These thighs breasts pointed eyes are not their choosing,

  But blind insignia by which are known

  Season, excitement, loosed upon this city.

  Turning: the brilliant Avenue, red, green,

  The laws of passage; marvellous hotels;

  Beyond, the dark apartment where one summer

  Night an insignificant dreamer,

  Defeated occupant, will close his eyes

  Mercifully on the expensive drama

  Wherein he wasted so much skill, such faith,

  And salvaged less than the intolerable statue.

  The Disciple

  Summoned from offices and homes, we came.

  By candle-light we heard him sing;

  We saw him with a delicate length of string

  Hide coins and bring a paper through a flame;

  I was amazed by what that man could do.

  And later on, in broad daylight,

  He made someone sit suddenly upright

  Who had lain long dead and whose face was blue.

  But most he would astonish us with talk.

  The warm sad cadence of his voice,

  His compassion, and our terror of his choice,

  Brought each of us both glad and mad to walk

  Beside him in the hills after sundown.

  He spoke of birds, of children, long

  And rubbing tribulation without song

  For the indigent and crippled of this town.

  Ventriloquist and strolling mage, from us,

  Respectable citizens, he took

  The hearts and swashed them in an upland brook,

  Calling them his, all men’s, anonymous.

  . . He gained a certain notoriety;

  The magical outcome of such love

  The State saw it could not at all approve

  And sought to learn where when that man would be.

  The people he had entertained stood by,
/>
  I was among them, but one whom

  He harboured kissed him for the coppers’ doom,

  Repenting later most most bitterly.

  They ran him down and drove him up the hill.

  He who had lifted but hearts stood

  With thieves, performing still what tricks he could

  For men to come, rapt in compassion still.

  Great nonsense has been spoken of that time.

  But I can tell you I saw then

  A terrible darkness on the face of men,

  His last astonishment; and now that I’m

  Old I behold it as a young man yet.

  None of us now knows what it means,

  But to this day our loves and disciplines

  Worry themselves there. We do not forget.

  A Point of Age

  I

  At twenty-five a man is on his way.

  The desolate childhood smokes on the dead hill,

  My adolescent brothels are shut down

  For industry has moved out of that town;

  Only the time-dishonoured beggars and

  The flat policemen, victims, I see still.

  Twenty-five is a time to move away.

  The travelling hands upon the tower call,

  The clock-face telescopes a long desire:

  Out of the city as the autos stream

  I watch, I whisper, Is it time . . time?

  Fog is enveloping the bridges, lodgers

  Shoulder and fist each other in the mire

  Where later, leaves, untidy lives will fall.

  Companions, travellers, by luck, by fault

  Whose none can ever decide, friends I had

  Have frozen back or slipt ahead or let

  Landscape juggle their destinations, slut

  Solace and drink drown the degraded eye.

  The fog is settling and the night falls, sad,

  Across the forward shadows where friends halt.

  Images are the mind’s life, and they change.

  How to arrange it—what can one afford

  When ghosts and goods tether the twitching will

  Where it has stood content and would stand still