John Berryman
Paperback | Pages: 427 pages Rating: 4.19 | 6411 Users | 168 Reviews
Present Books In Pursuance Of The Dream Songs
| Original Title: | The Dream Songs |
| ISBN: | 0374530661 (ISBN13: 9780374530662) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Narrative As Books The Dream Songs
This edition combines The Dream Songs, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969 and contains all 385 songs. Of The Dream Songs, A. Alvarez wrote in The Observer, "A major achievement. He has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself."
The Dream Songs are eighteen-line poems in three stanzas. Each individual poem is lyric and organized around an emotion provoked by an everyday event. The tone of the poems is less surreal than associational or intoxicated. The principal character of the song cycle is Henry, who is both the narrator of the poems and referred to by the narrator in the poems.
Describe Out Of Books The Dream Songs
| Title | : | The Dream Songs |
| Author | : | John Berryman |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 427 pages |
| Published | : | April 17th 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1969) |
| Categories | : | Poetry. Classics. Literature. American. Fiction |
Rating Out Of Books The Dream Songs
Ratings: 4.19 From 6411 Users | 168 ReviewsJudgment Out Of Books The Dream Songs
I had not read John Berryman for many years. But since it is his centennial year, I thought I would revisit these dark poems. I had forgotten how intense they were. In his earlier work "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet," he has Bradstreet say to her husband, if you don't want to feel my pain, you should neglect me. I think the same goes for these poems. If you don't want to feel the despair of Berryman's dark world, you should leave them alone.I had to read these in Poetry School.Almost everything else there I liked--but not these. I just didn't get it.Pretty hard to read. Just not very fun.(I know they're not meant for fun. Still...)Somehow, nothing to pull you in. Just kind of grating, off-putting.Also...You ever read "Cat's Cradle" ?How they say "No damned cat. No damned cradle."I thought that here.Where's the dreams? Where's the song?(And I've even heard some good explanations, too--about this stuff.)That Dreamsongs from some
Reading THE DREAM SONGS by John Berryman is difficult, especially if youve seen him reading the poems on YouTube, drunk with an overgrown beard. He looks like a nut and he sounds like one, too. Maybe like a homeless guy you slow down to listen to as you pass on the street, who could be a brilliant mind or have a slowly bleeding hole in his brain. It's beautiful and alien. Berrymans poetry is almost impenetrable for me, but then most everything is. However, I did have flashes of understanding a
This is definitely one of those over-the-top books of poetry by a great American poet. Berryman, who first earned a steady reading circle in 1953 with Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, shot to poetic stardom in 1964 with the publication of 77 Dream Songs. This was followed in 1968 with His Toy, His Dream, His Rest- a further 308 dream songs, albeit much more straightforward compared to the original 77. This edition brings together these two volumes of poetry with all the 385 dream songs as The
My relationship with John Berrymans Dream Songs, like the songs themselves, is murky, complicated, obscure in origin, and not easy to explainnot even to myself. One signpost of great art, it seems to me, is that the meaning of its greatness shifts in relation to the reader over time, and my appreciation of The Dream Songs has deepened and evolvedas I expect it will continue to for the rest of my lifein the two decades since it first came to my attention.In my twenties I knew that Berryman was,
I liked sad comical Henry as a kid, but find it all too personal, too inward, too confessional, too boring now.
Lyrical but stark style. I categorically dislike confessional poetry for the most part, but Berryman is an exception; the heavy suicide themes in particular are really well-done, and arresting considering his biography. A stellar crack at the "novel in verse" form, something that I've always been skeptical about. I feel like Henry most days, really.
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