John Berryman (1914–72) was one of the major post-war American poets, best known for an epic sequence of "dream songs", the first volume of which, 77 Dream Songs, was published in 1964 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Almost all the songs consist of three stanzas, of six lines each. As Berryman once explained in a preface, "The poem . . . is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, in early middle age . . . who . . . talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second; he has a friend, never named, who address himes as Mr Bones and variants thereof". As well as these various voices and perspectives, the diction ranges rapidly from slang to literary allusion to archaism, mingling registers in the space of a line, and the tone can slide between humour and sadness just as quickly. What remains consistent is a brilliant, lithe music; even when opaque and obscure, these pieces are a delight to read out loud or listen to.

Despite Berryman's assertion that "Henry" is "not the poet, not me", Henry's life, like Berryman's, encompasses loss (there are elegies for many of Berryman's friends), lust (affairs, and various marriages), literary fame, drink and depression. Berryman's father had committed suicide in 1926, and this is arguably the first and most significant loss or "departure" shadowing the whole sequence. Berryman also took his own life, jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minnesota.

The Times Literary Supplement published five of the Dream Songs as early as 1959, including the poem which would eventually open the entire sequence, "Huffy Henry hid the day".

Dream Song 1

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulkt.
I see his point – a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talkt.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

JOHN BERRYMAN

To read last week's Poem of the Week, "Still Falls the Rain" by Edith Sitwell, click here.

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