His toy, his dream, his rest: 308 dream songs

by John Berryman

Book by Berryman, John

Genres: Poetry

332 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

John Allyn Berryman (originally John Allyn Smith) was an American poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are playful, witty, and morbid. Berryman committed suicide in 1972.

A pamphlet entitled Poems was published in 1942 and his first proper book, The Dispossessed, appeared six years later. Of his youthful self he said, 'I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.' His first major work, in which he began to develop his own unique style of writing, was Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, which appeared in Partisan Review in 1953 and was published as a book in 1956. Another pamphle.

His thought made pockets & the plane buckt, followed. It was the collection called Dream Songs that earned him the most admiration. The first volume, entitled 77 Dream Songs, was published in 1964 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The second volume, entitled His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, appeared in 1968.

The two volumes were combined as The Dream Songs in 1969. By that time Berryman, though not a "popular" poet, was well established as an important force in the literary world, and he was widely read among his contemporaries. In 1970 he published the drastically different Love & Fame. It received many negative reviews, along with a little praise, most notably from Saul Bellow and John Bailey. Despite its negative reception, its colloquial style and sexual forthrightness have influenced many younger poets, especially from Britain and Ireland. Delusions Etc., his bleak final collection, which he prepared for printing but did not live to see appear, continues in a similar vein. Another book of poems, Henry's Fate, culled from Berryman's manuscripts, appeared posthumously, as did a book of essays, The Freedom of the Poet, and some drafts of a novel, Recovery.

The poems that form Dream Songs involve a character who is by turns the narrator and the person addressed by a narrator. Because readers assumed that these voices were the poet speaking directly of himself, Berryman's poetry was considered part of the Confessional poetry movement. Berryman, however, scorned the idea that he was a Confessional poet.

Reviews

[Jenny]

235
Tears Henry shed for poor old Hemingway...
...
Save us from shotguns & fathers' suicides.
It all depends who you're the father of
if you want to kill yourself-
a bad example, murder of oneself,
the final death, in a paroxysm, of love
for which good mercy hides?
...
Mercy! my father; do not pull the trigger
or all my life I'll suffer from your anger
killing what you began.

384
The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done,
I stand above my father's grave with rage,
often, often before
I've made this awful pilgrimage to one
who cannot visit me, who tore his page
out: I come back for more...

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't understand it but I am overcome by its beauty.

[Luke Dylan Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A/A+

Been reading this book for months now, off and on. My one complaint is that Berryman informing us that these Dream Songs are not meant to be understood should arrive far earlier in the text.

These poems are beautiful and make an odd kind of sense… they are also depressing as fuck and confusing as hell.

Been thinking about doing a YouTube video series where I do close readings of each Dream Song poem… I’ve bought a bunch of books to read for research and am trying to develop the idea as best I can. Hopefully I will get started on it by the new year.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

“stability, I will stay

in my monastery until my death
& the fate my actions have so hardly earned.
The horizon is all cloud.
Leaves on leaves on leaves of books I've turned
and I know nothing, Henry said aloud,
with his ultimate breath.”

[Izunia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

It would be nice to discuss these poems. They have so many cultural references.

[chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never liked brains --
it's the texture & the thought --
but I will like them now, spooning at you,
my guardian, slowly, until at length the rains
lose heart and the sun flames out.
-- "95"

Chrysanthemums crest, far away, in the Emperor's garden
and, whenever we are, we must beg always pardon.
Pardon was the word.
Pardon was the only word, in ferocious cold
like Asiatic prisons, where we live
and strive and strive to forgive.
Melted my honey, summers ago. I told
her true & summer things. She leaned an ear
in my direction, here.
-- "108"

Maybe
if frozen slush will represent the soul
which is to represented in the hereafter
I ask for a decree
dooming my bitter enemies to laughter
advanced against them. If the dream was small
it was my dream also, Henry's.
-- "132. A Small Dream"

even god howled 'I am.'
-- "141"

I'm cross with god who has wrecked this generation.
First he seized Ted, then Richard, Randall, and now Delmore.
In between he gorged on Sylvia Plath.
That was a first rate haul.
-- "153"

Words light as feathers
fly. Wake with rage ruined limbs. Hoarfrost is blue
at dawn on the storm-windows.
Thuds. Almost floors. In the garden I am alone
among the animals. There is a shrill music
of which the less said the better.
Cold dough: is not that the one thing that might matter?
That, and the frightful fact that I am alone
while he sorts out the bloody saints.
-- "174. Kyrie Eleison"

Slowly the sloth moved on in search of prey,
I see that. The jungles flash with light,
in some angles dark as midnight,
and chuck chuck chuck the spark did make a noise
when he cross the street on de electric wires
but that sloth was all right.
Swiftly the wind rose, gorgons showed their teeth,
while the bombs bombed on empty territory beneath.
I love you.
-- "192"

All his long life, hopeless lads grew cold.
He drew their death-masks.
To listen to him, you'd think that growing old
at twenty-two was horrible, and the ordinary tasks
of people didn't exist.
-- "205"

After the lightning, this afternoon, came thunder:
the natural world makes sense: cats hate water
and love fish.
-- "233. Cantatrice"

A rainy Sunday morning, on vacation
as well as Fellowship, he could not rest:
bitterly he shook his head.
-- Mr Bones, the Lord will bring us to a nation
where everybody only rest. -- I confess
that notion bores me dead,
for there's no occupation there, save God,
if that, and long experience of His works
has not taught me his love.
His love must be a very strange thing indeed,
considering its products. No, I want to rest here,
neither below nor above.
-- "256"

the great sky grew grey
never to wake again while
the visible universe grows older, while
onflying stars out to my edges sail --
-- "269"

I sing with infinite slowness finite pain
I have reached into the corner of my brain
to have it out.
I sat by fires when I was young, & now
I'm not I sit by fires again, although
I do it more slowly.
-- "305"

Does the validity of the dream-life suppose a Maker?
If so what a careless monster he must be, whole,
taking the claws with the purr.
-- "317"

He took a hard look
at the programme of the years
and struck his hardened palms across his ears
& 'Basta!' cried: I should have been a noted crook
or cat in a loud slum yes.
-- "343"

Cold & golden lay the high heroine
in a wilderness of bears. Let one man in.
One is enough.
Fish for the master, who will do you well,
rely not on the stormy citadel --
it's a matter of love.
-- "372"