Blog 6

Reading Mr. John Berrymans dream song poems, I was again struck by how often some of the best of the contemporary poets had such life changing events coupled with very hard times dealing with depression. I do not know what it is about depression that seems to motivate those poets into writing the great works that they have written, but I do wish that it didn’t take such tragic events to get the great texts that they have produced. In particular his dream song number 153 in which he writes about being angry at the god who in his words “has wrecked this generation.” He lists the names of many poets, about five in all that ended up either taking their own lives or otherwise dying in a tragic manner. Such as Randall Jarrell who was in a car accident that was more than a little suspicious. For me one of the more tragic aspects of this poem is how John Berryman eventually ended up committing suicide. He did this by jumping off of a bridge in Minneapolis after struggling with alcoholism and depression. A line from that particular poem that stuck with me “We suffer on, a day, a day, a day.” For me this is very poignant. I really feel that for many of those poets they did suffer on, day after day, until they decided to finally take that fatal step and end their own lives. I wonder if any of those great poets could have been saved if they would have had access to modern medicine. Or would that very same modern medicine rob from them the genius that set them apart from the rest of the flock.

Another aspect of Berryman’s poetry that interested me is his frequent references to a Henry. Henry apparently is a white man who like Berryman seems to suffer from some sort of irreversible loss. While Berryman’s loss can be traced to the tragic suicide of his father, I am not sure if Berryman ever acknowledges what tragedy befell Henry. Henry also has a friend often referred to as a Mr. Bones. While Henry was a fictional character I believe that he helps to mirror some of the very real feelings that Berryman was struggling with on a day to day basis as he himself aged. I was impressed by how strictly all of his poems followed along with his scheme. All of them seem to follow a pattern of six-line stanza that employs lines one two four and five in pentameter and lines three and six in trimeter. All in all Berryman wrote many great dream poems, unfortuanlly like to many poets in the past and even up to today he was driven to end his own life prematurely before he could publish more work other than his Dream Songs.