I used to listen to this reading all the time; I had it on a cassette tape.

This is a great contribution to the KZread community

ooh - I had this on tape years ago - thanks for sharing

Fascinating to hear the differences between these and the published poems eg the lovely line 'Come away, Mr Bones' is missing from DS76 (which becomes DS 77)

Thank you so much for posting this!

I think I sat next to John Berryman in the third grade. That personality is under every streetlight.

DS became better with the years and with each time they were read. I think that everyone knew that Henry was JB to a certain degree, that there were other voices that were other alter egos of JB. The DS are very easy to get wrapped up in and one can start easily trying to imitate them. JB was also doing something with his voice that most couldn't or didn't want to do, and that was go into the self , the psychi, the voice, to the point of death.

Poets often do not have easy lives, to put it mildly, and I do not begrudge any poet today who finds that an academic career is the best way for him to keep afloat in a contemporary world that does not adequately value its artists, provided it has no impact on the quality of his work. For me, Berryman comes across as a crochety rebel with more than his fair share of causes, some perhaps self-prodded. His reading voice is that of an even grouchier Groucho Marx, with clipped consonants, pyrotechnical plosives, and vowels floating on choppy waters like broken bottles. Musically, his voice aims not to please or seduce but to bellow and decry and wallow in self-irony. I personally find Berryman's aggrieved, persecutional tone perfectly suited to his subject matter, and his literary contributions some of the best of his era and beyond.

I stumbled on this treasure by accident. Is there some way of making it more generally known and available? So little of Berryman reading his own poetry is accessible, a shameful commentary on our culture and its attitude toward our poets. Perhaps a compilation can be made of all known recordings, properly documented and indexed by poem would help, including, most notably, those appearing here.

@carlswart7310

6 жыл бұрын

Perhaps they can. If you have the time and resources to make that happen, power to you. A treasure, indeed! I don't own this recording. It was once sold (along with volumes of comparable treasures) by the American of American Poets at www.poets.org. Why they have ceased selling or otherwise making these available in their store--instead of trinkets and handbags--I couldn't say. Perhaps it is that people often want treasures for free and so printing it was not worth their while; I don't know. To answer your question, there is a way, but it is their prerogative and not mine. I post it here simply so that people can enjoy it. Some of his other readings can be found on KZread, unless they've been taken down. You are not the first to request this. I suppose I will give a shot to indexing the poems below, though I don't know the title of the first one. I suppose it's in _The Collected Poems_, but don't have the energy to dig for that just now. If you would like to jump in and add time stamps, feel free. The numbering of the _Songs_ is from memory, so please feel free to correct that if needed. Similarly, if I missed one, please let me know. 1. Introduction (by Stanley Kunitz) 2. Story of a Banker and a Tot 3. Some Notes on Diction and Context 4. From "Scholars at the Orchid Pavilion" 5. More Comments Tying Diction to _Homage to Mistress Bradstreet_ and _The Dream Songs_ 6. _Homage to Mistress Bradstreet_ (st. 31) '--It is Spring's New England. Pussy willows wedge' 7. _Dream Song_ 1 'Huffy Henry hid the day' 8. _Dream Song_ 7 '"The Prisoner of Shark Island," with Paul Muni' 9. _Dream Song_ 4 'Filling her compact & delicious body' 10. _Dream Song_ 5 'Henry sats in de bar & was odd' 11. _Dream Song_ 18 'A Strut for Roethke' 12. _Dream Song_ 29 'There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart' 13. _Dream Song_ 28 'Snow Line' 14. _Dream Song_ 16 'Henry's pelt was put on sundry walls' 15. _Dream Song_ 23 'The Lay of Ike' 16. _Dream Song_ 27 'The greens of the Ganges delta foliate' 17. _Dream Song_ 75 'Turning it over, considering, like a madman' 18. _Dream Song_ 55 'Peter's not friendly. He gives me sideways looks.' 19. _Dream Song_ 77 'Seedy Henry rose up shy in de world'

Favorite moment of this talk: 19:37-19:48

7:00 Berryman

He sounds only slightly drunk.

6:38

It's too bad Alvarez could not have included Sylvia Plath as keeping personal company with Lowell and Berryman

@bobtaylor170

8 ай бұрын

Plath was dead by the time of this recording.

Only Berryman, can properly read the writing laid out before us. Maybe Nick Cave.

One of the worst poets who ever lived. His work is tone deaf, tin-eared, and bereft of scansion. Play a John Berryman Dream Songs reading against Basil Bunting reading his Odes & Briggflatts. Bunting's sound is musical futurity, whereas Berryman's sound falls flat on dead air. Oi veh. Berryman is one of the great poster children for By-Product of Academic Industry. He sets a classic example of what not to do.

@CreamedCheesed

3 жыл бұрын

I’ll check out Basil Bunting’s work, Eric. He appears to have escaped me. Thanks!

@ericmalone3213

3 жыл бұрын

@@CreamedCheesed Check out Peter Makin's BASIL BUNTING: THE SHAPING OF HIS VERSE, as well as Richard Burton's biography of Bunting, A STRONG SONG TOWS US. Bunting was not an academic but he did give some talks at Newcastle which are superb, edited by Peter Makin, published by Johns Hopkins: BASIL BUNTING ON POETRY.

@solomonelliott3104

3 жыл бұрын

I must respectfully disagree, as a fan of both Bunting and Berryman (being from Newcastle myself) I do not see how the former is musical and the latter is tone deaf. Both come from different poetic traditions, and to enjoy one and not enjoy the other is purely personal opinion.

@ericmalone3213

3 жыл бұрын

@@solomonelliott3104 Mr Eliot, personal opinion has nothing to do with anything, there is a such a thing as aesthetic sensibility, which has nothing to do wth likes and dislikes. Bunting's poetry features a high degree of interwoven music, complex internal rhyme, this is quite obvious, unless the reader is tone-deaf and it is lost on them. Berryman's work is consistently tone deaf, lacking in musical complexity. If you don't know Peter Makin's BASIL BUNTING, THE SHAPING OF HIS VERSE, check it out and get back to me. CHEERS.

@solomonelliott3104

3 жыл бұрын

@@ericmalone3213 I will read it when I get the chance as I am intrigued by your opinion on the matter, but as a student of literature myself I have a lot of books to read before my next term at uni. I will let you know my thoughts on the book at a later date. I think I understand your point on aesthetic sensibility. But I am bound to ask, do you not think Berryman also deals with ideas in a complex, interwoven way? Of course it is clear Bunting achieves this through rhyme and a deep understanding of musicality. But does Berryman not also possess this skill and knowingly choses to subvert our expectations of what poetry does? I think, for example, the title of Berryman's greatest work 'The Dream Songs' is an ironic reflection upon this very idea. And to dismiss a different aesthetic sensibility as 'tone deaf' does not, in my opinion, reflect fairly upon Berryman or Bunting's unique approach to poetic craft. All the best