Before I read John Berryman biography, I thought he is really nuts. However, on his biography he described as one of the major post-war American poets, and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Most of the poem contains extreme expression such as “my psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist” (Dream Song 3),” Filling her compact & delicious body” (Dream Song 4). Those sexual expressions do not seem to hide other meaning inside rather John Berryman wanted to deliver nasty feelings. I believe expressing a true feeling without distortion is one of the characteristics that Berryman’s poets have. Also he seems to be suffered from loneliness in his life. In his biography, there is a story that he was not hanging around with his friends when he was young. In Dream Song 28, he wrote “If only the strange one with so few legs would come…he too is on my side”.
In his poems, Berryman uses name “Henry”. Henry can be Berryman himself, or his ideal friend, but it seems obvious that Henry and Berryman shares memories and feelings. Also most of his poem has three stanzas and each stanza has six lines. Also Berryman never uses word “and” in his poem. But he uses character “&” to replace the word.
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