John Berryman

I came under the heavy influence of John Berryman shortly after leaving Eugene, in 1974. We'd grazed over him in a writing class I was in at Oregon and I was taken in by his odd syntax and freewheeling juxtaposition of images. Like Weldon Kees with the specter of Robinson, Berryman carried an alter-ego in his notebook, a troubled soul named "Henry." Berryman used Henry to root out life's curious agonies and as a second voice to counter despair and loss. Henry could be wise and confused at the same time, a psychological force with whom Berryman could commiserate about life's hardships and the tragedies that haunted him.

His businessman father committed suicide when Berryman was an adolescent and the sad reality deeply disturbed the poet. He carried the hardship throughout his life, yet managed to become a renowned teacher at Harvard and Princeton and later at the University of Minnesota, where he was working at the time of his own suicide at age 58.

Among Berryman's most venerated poems are his Dream Songs, of which he wrote hundreds. This is one of my favorites.


Dream Song 14:

Life, Friends is Boring

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

Who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind me, wag.

John Berryman

TS