John Berryman > Quotes

“I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.”
― John Berryman

“You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.”
― John Berryman

“Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“Them lady poets must not marry, pal.”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.”
― John Berryman

“The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.”
― John Berryman

“ Two daiquiris
withdrew into a corner of a gorgeous room
and one told the other a lie.”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.
They are only meant to terrify & comfort.”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“We must travel in the direction of our fear.”
― John Berryman

“something has been said for sobriety but very little.”
― John Berryman

“There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).”
― John Berryman, Recovery

“I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature, ”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“That is our ‘pointed task. Love & die.”
― John Berryman

“I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.”
― John Berryman

“…Henry is tired of winter,
& haircuts, & a squeamish comfy ruin-prone proud national
mind, & Spring (in the city so called)
Henry likes Fall.
Hé would be prepared to líve in a world of Fáll
for ever, impenitent Henry.
But the snows and summers grieve and dream;

These fierce & airy occupations, and love,
Raved away so many of Henry’s years…”
― John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs

“I cry. Evil dissolves, and love, like foam;
that love. Prattle of children powers me home,
my heart claps like the swan’s
under a frenzy of who love me and who shine.”
― John Berryman

“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
(repeatingly) "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 the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.”
― John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs

“The splendour & the lose grew all the same, Sire.”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“Listen, for poets are feigned to lie, and I
For you a liar am a thousand times . . . .”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“Is stuffed, de world, wif feeding girls.”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“Them lady poets must not marry, pal . . . It is a true error to marry with poets / or to be by them.”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“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.”
― John Berryman

“The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man

Amid the doctors in the Temple at twelve, between mother & host at Cana implored too soon, in the middle of disciples, the midst of the mob, between High-Priest and Procurator, among the occupiers,
between the malefactors, and 'stetit in medio, et dixit, pax vobis' and 'ascensit ad mediam Personarum et caelorum,' dear my Lord,mercy a sinner nailed dead-centre too, pray not to late,-
for also Ezra stood between the seven & the six, restoring the new Law.”
― John Berryman, Delusions, Etc.

“No, I didn't. But I was aware that I was embarked on an epic. In the case of the Bradstreet poem, I didn't know. The situation with that poem was this. I invented the stanza in '48 and wrote the first stanza and the first three lines of the second stanza, and then I stuck. I had in mind a poem roughly the same length as another of mine, “The Statue”—about seven or eight stanzas of eight lines each. Then I stuck. I read and read and read and thought and collected notes and sketched for five years until, although I was still in the second stanza, I had a mountain of notes and draftings—no whole stanzas, but passages as long as five lines. The whole poem was written in about two months, after which I was a ruin for two years. When I finally got going, I had this incredible mass of stuff and a very good idea of the shape of the poem, with the exception of one crucial point, which was this. I'll tell you in a minute why and how I got going. The great exception was this: It did not occur to me to have a dialogue between them—to insert bodily Henry into the poem . . . Me, to insert me, in my own person, John Berryman, I, into the poem . . .”
― John Berryman