Showing posts with label Dream Songs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dream Songs. Show all posts

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Happy National Poetry Month - John Berryman's Dream Song 29

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Ed.



Dream Song 29


By John Berryman
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart   
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time   
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind   
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,   
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;   
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.   
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.
                    ---o0o---

Thursday, May 19, 2011

John Berryman reads his Dream Song No. 26. You've probably never seen anyone read poetry like this before.

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Editor

I've never seen John Berryman read poetry before tonight, although Dream Songs is one of my favorite books of 20th century poetry, and I have read most of his other books of poetry, prose and fiction. 

This poem is scary, jangled, beautiful, elusive, creepy, and slangy with amazing rhythms and chiming internal rhyme. I've never seen anyone read poetry like this before.  It's riveting and disturbing, especially when you know the dénouement of his story: leaping from a bridge to his death in the Mississippi River five years after this.

---o0o---

Sunday, April 24, 2011

John Berryman's Dream Song 64


Dream Song 64
by John Berryman


Supreme my holdings, greater yet my need,
thoughtless I go out. Dawn. Have I my cig's,
my flaskie O,
O crystal cock,—my kneel has gone to seed,—
and anybody's blessing? (Blast the MIGs
for making funble so

my tardy readying.) Yes, utter' that.
Anybody's blessing? —Mr Bones,
you makes too much
démand. I might be 'fording you a hat:
it gonna rain. —I knew a one of groans
& greed & spite, of a crutch,

who thought he had, a vile night, been-well-blest.
He see someone run off. Why not Henry,
with his grasp of desire?
—Hear matters hard to manage at de best,
Mr Bones. Tween what we see, what be,
is blinds. Them blinds' on fire.
---o0o---

Friday, April 22, 2011

John Berryman's Dream Song 29





















Dream Song 29
by John Berryman

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.


But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.
---o0o---