John Berryman
The Dream Songs:
Alliterative, graceful, delicious... I didn't appreciate Berryman's verse until about seventeen minutes ago. I thought it was all fine, and liked that a prominent figure is a guy called Henry, but I never remembered anything especially resonant or different about it other than "dreaminess." Now, though, it seems refined and carefully orchestrated. Also, his use of space and object, the balance between feeling and sound... it all seems remarkable to me today. Lines like:
There sat down, once a thing on Henry's heart,
so 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.
(29)
Here we have so much of Henry, his feelings, his intimate thoughts, his body -- but we also have much more than him. We have time and song, history and circumstance, & more, of course, the symbol. And everyone loves an ampersand or few. Also, it's tough to distinguish between hopefulness and melancholy, between withholding and disclosure. It's both touching and removed, honest and discrete. In any case, it's still dreamy.
Henry's Understanding:
What I like about this poem is the absence of Henry, or the existence of his figure and symbol as collapsed with (yet separate from) the self. The blurry relationship between narrator, subject, and object tends to be emphasized throughout Berryman's work, but this little poem continues to strike and perplex me. It ends like this:
It only takes a few minutes to make a man.
A concentration upon now & here.
Suddenly, unlike Bach,
& horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me
that one night, instead of my warm pajamas,
I'd take off all my clothes
& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff
into the terrible water & walk forever
under it out toward the island.
(1972)
I like the look toward the future, a wish, more than just a dream, but a palpable and carefully articulated desire. It feels eerie, but filled with wonder and reverence.
Philip Larkin:
For me, Philip Larkin's always been a little meh. I'm not especially opposed, but I've never been convinced he's any better than Frost or more interesting than someone like Moore or Auden. I even tend to rope him in with Ted Hughes and Dylan, and nobody wants to be in that boring company. "Wild men" who speak about being filled with "rage" and energy, blazing forward into and from the beyond... those guys speak of boldness but are stylistically pretty bland. As a poet in the tradition of Yeats, then Auden, I feel that he should've evolved more, to be less like Yeats and Auden.
That said, I found some Larkin I liked today. I was looking to like him, really, I swear. I was totally looking to love Larkin. And now, I like. Liking is a start. Here's why:
Talking in Bed
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why,
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not true and not unkind.
(1964)
It's not especially experimental or edgy, obviously, but I appreciate the technique and simplicity. Here, spareness works to his advantage, as does delicate language, tone, and image. The balance between delicate and grand, between the particular and everything else, feels honest and refreshing. I like that. I also like that the content, though a little sad and a little trite, feels true.
Hart Crane:
Everyone loves Hart Crane. He makes everyone feel sad, in his poems and in the circumstances of his death. He makes everyone feel something, though, that should be faced, addressed, and felt. Like this:
YOU ARE THAT FRAIL...
You are that frail decision that devised
Their lowest common multiple of human need,
And on that bleak assumption risked the prize
Forgetfulness of all you bait for greed ...
(Complete Poems 209)
Also, my personal favorite:
HER EYES HAD...
Her eyes had the blue of desperate days,
Freezingly bright; I saw her hair unfurl,
Unsanctioned, finally, by anything left her to know
She had learned that Paradise is not a question of eggs
If anything, it was her privilege to undress
Quietly in a glass she had guarded
Always with correcting states before.
It was this, when I asked her how she died,
That asked me why her final happy cry
Should not have found an echo somewhere, and I stand
Before her finally, as beside a wall, listening as though
I heard the breath of Holofernes toast
Judith's cold bosom through her righteous years.
(CP 211)
Favorite 13 lines of Ulysses for the day:
Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. (89)
Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. (93)
They talked seriously of a mocker's serious. (163)
absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature's incorruptible benefaction. (314)
The visible signs of antesatisfaction?
An approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual elevation: a tentative revelation: a silent contemplation. (604)
The visible signs of postsatisfaction?
A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection. (604)
Was the narrative otherwise unaltered by modifications?
Absolutely. (605)
arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts
all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will
Yes. (644)
I've always been partial to the ending. I know it seems obvious, but the obvious choice is usually the obvious choice because it's the right and true one. Yes I say yes I will Yes.
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