77 Dream Songs: Poems (FSG Classics)

This is a wonderful gem. Thoughtful poems that touch the soul. I don’t usually buy poetry but these are fantastic for meditation.

These 77 are a current into which you release yourself. If you over-think the poems, you will find yourself on shore.

Tendentious

Read this stuff at your peril. I say Phaw!

Great shape!

*I bought my copy from another vendor.I was not a fan of Berryman. I couldn't make heads or tails of his dream songs. I'd rather tease curls out of my poodle hair on a humid day than try to tease meaning out of one of these "dream songs." And I really hated the cheesy, poorly rendered southern black dialect he often assumed through the use of improper grammer and mangled diction. I don't care when he was writing, that's bad form and reading it gave me a headache and indigestion.To be balanced about this review, there were things I did like about the collection. I enjoyed the repeated figure, "Henry," who is like an everyman, someone to whom the reader is supposed to be able to remain connected throughout their reading of the collection. I fel this tool was effective making it easier for me to empathize with the human element of each piece.Also, outside of racist dialect, Berryman's made up words could be quite clever and hilarious. Such as on p9, in "The Prisoner of Shark Island," he writes, "Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One. / Fúnnee; he don't feel so." Readers know what that first word in the second line means, and why a doppelganger has been called into it's place, even if those who have heard it spoken do not; this little bit of being in on the writer's joke heightens the humor.Even my appreciation of this obvious skill could not get me past that terrible dialect, however. There are other ways to suggest manners of speaking than this, and they work much better; I wish Berryman had used them.

I am reading “77 Dream Songs” by John Berryman out loud to myself. I find it is the only way to hear the music of his poems. I tried reading them silently, but I couldn’t understand them—they spoke nothing to me—and so I started reading them out loud in a scruffy voice while sipping on some dark coffee; and finally, I started to understand them; at a raw level of emotion, is where they speak to me, because for the most part, I don’t understand the words, or rather, I don’t understand their order, their syntax, their exterior meaning ... but the music, that’s where it’s at, the music of a very disenchanted heart. Beautiful and honest.

Bugger me! Why don't educational boards include this kind of material on the English literature syllabus for students alongside Shakespeare, Hardy and Tennyson?. Remarkable…stunning.

Everyone drools over Berryman. Can't understand why. Probably my problem if he's lasted this long.

I can't deny these poems are difficult (e e cummings and then some) and at first I had to fight the desire to fling them aside, but if you persist (I find) they will reward you. How about poem 14: Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so./After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,/we ourselves flash and yearn..