Dream Songs-FK

I think professor said it best in her email when she said John Berryman was nuts. Berryman definitely has a unique style to writing. Most of his poems usually consist of three stanzas and these stanzas usually consist of six lines. For the most part Berryman's poems don't have structured rhyme schemes, but there are rhymes in some of his poems. For example Berryman rhymes the words cloud and aloud in dream song 5. One thing I noticed when reading Berryman's poems is the fact that he uses a lot of short phrases and sentences that make you slow down when you're reading them. Another thing I noticed is Berryman's poems don't have clear underlying themes like Sylvia Plath's poems. Plath's poems usually had some reference to her father, Nazis, or death; while Berryman's poems had different themes and references in each poem. One thing that I did notice that Berryman does in each poem is that he refers to people by their name. Some poet's don't specifically say the name of the person they are talking about in a poem, but Berryman will refer to them directly. Some names that Berryman used in more than one poem are Henry, Jack, and Mary. Now I don't know if these people that Berryman refers to are friends or family members, but I believe they have some significance to Berryman because he is referring to them directly in his poems. Another thing I got from these poems was the fact that Berryman tried to tell a story through short thoughts or fragmented thoughts. I almost get the idea that Berryman is writing the exact things that went through his head during the situation he is writing about. One strange thing that Berryman did in some poems was use parenthesis, which was the first time I have ever seen that done. All in all I thought that most of these poems were difficult to read and understand, but I believe that was Berryman's intention when he wrote them in the style he did.