“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
The great American poet, John Berryman, died by suicide on this day in 1972, jumping from a Minneapolis bridge in the depths of winter. He was 57 years old.
Berryman was a true wild man of poetry.
His writing is dominated by a cluster of obsessive, interconnected themes that reflect his confessional intensity and formal experimentation. He was an original poet who couldn’t be imitated, and he gave every ounce of the power he harbored to his art.
He began publishing his works in 1940, at the age of 26, and never stopped.
“I admire the private intensity of Berryman’s work,” writes Henri Cole in the New Yorker, “which records not only the depths of his own degradation but also love and ecstasy. When asked to define the most important elements of poetry, Berryman replied, ‘Imagination, love, intellect—and pain. Yes, you’ve got to know pain.’”
Berryman’s life was riddled with alcoholism, depression, and chaos. He appeared as a mad poet with his grey beard and wild antics, but he was an honest writer who never concealed the darkness within. He plumbed the abyss of his inner life where all the pain, torment, and erratic behaviour sprang from. And he revealed it to us in the most translucent and candid way possible.
In his most famous work, The Dream Songs, Berryman writes about the hospitalizations and the binges and the “chemical life” that both fueled and destroyed his creativity. He was both a prophet and clown, terrified of mediocrity, and forever revolting “against the ordinary” in both language and life.
Berryman was once asked in an interview what he would like to be remembered for. Sitting there in his rocking chair with cigarette smoke bellowing up in his face, he replied: “The fact that I worked hard. That’s quite enough for me.”
Below is a remarkable little poem by the great poet, W.S. Merwin, written in appreciation of his mentor, John Berryman. I hope you enjoy it.
BERRYMAN
By W.S. Merwin
I will tell you what he told me in the years just after the war as we then called the second world war don’t lose your arrogance yet he said you can do that when you’re older lose it too soon and you may merely replace it with vanity just one time he suggested changing the usual order of the same words in a line of verse why point out a thing twice he suggested I pray to the Muse get down on my knees and pray right there in the corner and he said he meant it literally it was in the days before the beard and the drink but he was deep in tides of his own through which he sailed chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop he was far older than the dates allowed for much older than I was he was in his thirties he snapped down his nose with an accent I think he had affected in England as for publishing he advised me to paper my wall with rejection slips his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled with the vehemence of his views about poetry he said the great presence that permitted everything and transmuted it in poetry was passion passion was genius and he praised movement and invention I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can’t you can’t you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don’t write
Thank you so much for reading. My work and research I put into this Substack Page are entirely reader-supported. If you enjoy the content I provide and are not ready to become a paid subscriber, you can simply make a one-time donation here at Buy Me A Coffee. If you can. I appreciate you all following this page. You’ve truly made it into a magical little online community. Thank You.
