Abstract
W.S. Merwin’s accounts of his encounters with John Berryman in his poems and prose writings speak to an important exchange in the younger poet’s artistic development. However, they also suggest interesting ways for thinking about poetic influence, inheritance and affiliation in twentieth-century poetry in the United States. The purpose of this essay is to tease out what Berryman meant to Merwin, based on the evidence to be found in the poems “Berryman” and “Lament for the Makers” in particular. It will also explore the more general questions and concerns that arise out of Berryman and Merwin’s (real and imagined) engagements about the art of poetry, a concern they shared with their mutual mentor and friend R.P. Blackmur.
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Notes
- 1.
W.S. Merwin, “Berryman” in Michael Wiegers, ed. The Essential W.S. Merwin (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2017), 188. All references to Merwin’s poetry in this essay, unless stated otherwise, are to this selection.
- 2.
Merwin, “Lament for the Makers” in Wiegers, 256–63.
- 3.
Merwin, “Berryman” in Wiegers, 188.
- 4.
For this period of Berryman’s life, the most helpful and reliable accounts are provided in the following: E.M. Halliday, John Berryman and the Thirties: A Memoir (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988); John Haffenden, The Life of John Berryman (Boston and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982); Eileen Simpson, Poets in Their Youth: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1982). The journalist Steve Marsh has observed that Berryman’s “voice retained its distinctive learned tenor with a curious flat accent you couldn’t quite place – New York? London? Minnesota?” See Marsh, “From the Archives: Homage to Mr Berryman,” MplsStPaul Magazine (1 September 2008), online at: https://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/homage-to-mister-berryman/ (accessed 9 December 2021).
- 5.
Merwin, “Berryman” in Wiegers, 189.
- 6.
Stephanie Burt, “Berryman,” available online at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70304/ws-merwin-berryman (accessed 9 December 2021). Burt’s piece is part of a feature called Remembering W.S. Merwin that was published by the Poetry Foundation after Merwin’s death in 2019: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144293/remembering-ws-merwin (accessed 9 December 2021).
- 7.
Merwin, Summer Doorways (Berkeley, CA: Shoemaker Hoard, 2005), 46.
- 8.
John Berryman, “Olympus” in Love & Fame (rev. ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 18–19. Unless stated otherwise, all references to Berryman’s poems from Love & Fame in this essay are to this edition.
- 9.
Ibid., 19.
- 10.
Merwin, Summer Doorways, 46.
- 11.
Merwin, “Berryman” in Wiegers, 188.
- 12.
See R.P. Blackmur, “Statements and Idyls,” Poetry 46.2 (May 1935): 108–12.
- 13.
Berryman, Love & Fame, 18.
- 14.
For a detailed consideration of Berryman’s critical and creative engagements with Blackmur, see James D. Bloom, The Stock of Available Reality: R.P. Blackmur and John Berryman (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1984). Reviewing Bloom’s study, J.A. Bryant makes the important observation that Blackmur and Berryman “differed significantly, sometimes painfully, in temperament, taste, and allegiances.” See J.A. Bryant, Jr., “R.P. Blackmur: Making Peace with Disorder,” The Sewanee Review 97.1 (Winter 1989): 155; 153–62.
- 15.
Berryman, “Nowhere” in Love & Fame, 21.
- 16.
See Berryman, Love & Fame, 79–90.
- 17.
Merwin, “Berryman” in Wiegers, 188.
- 18.
See Berryman, “From the Middle and Senior Generations” in The Freedom of the Poet (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), 312; 310–15.
- 19.
Merwin, “Berryman” in Wiegers, 189.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
See, for example, Berryman’s interviews with William Heyen (1970), Peter Stitt (1970) and Joseph Haas (1971) in Eric Hoffman, ed. Conversations with John Berryman (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2021).
- 22.
Merwin, “Berryman” in Wiegers, 189.
- 23.
Merwin, “Lament for the Makers” in Wiegers, 256–63.
- 24.
William Dunbar, “The Lament for the Makaris” in Priscilla Bawcutt, ed. Selected Poems (London and New York: Longman, 1996), 105–10.
- 25.
Merwin, “Lament for the Makers” in Wiegers, 256.
- 26.
Ibid., 257.
- 27.
Ibid., 258.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid., 259.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Dunbar, 108.
- 32.
Merwin, “Lament for the Makers” in Wiegers, 262.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Berryman’s “Elegy: To Hart Crane” is reprinted in Kevin Young, ed. John Berryman: Selected Poems (New York: American Poets Project / Library of America, 2004), 1.
- 36.
Hart Crane, “To Brooklyn Bridge” in Brom Weber, ed. The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane (New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1966), 45.
- 37.
See William Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.1.180 in Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, eds The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 684.
- 38.
“caravan, n.” OED Online. December 2021. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.elib.tcd.ie/view/Entry/27717?rskey=bm4yRR&result=1 (accessed 9 December 2021). For another, rather different take on the image of the caravan by a contemporary poet, see Derek Mahon, “Caravans” in Olympia and the Internet (Loughcrew: The Gallery Press, 2017), 71–75.
- 39.
Merwin, “Lament for the Makers” in Wiegers, 261.
- 40.
Ibid. For a good example of the word “speechless” in the work of another poet, see Crane’s contemporary Edna St Vincent Millay’s sonnet “When we that wore the myrtle wear the dust,” in which the speaker says:
-
When we lie speechless in the muffling mould,
-
Tease not our ghosts with slander, pause not there
-
To say that love is false and soon grows cold,
-
But pass in silence the mute grave of two
-
Who lived and died believing love was true.
I am grateful to Heather MacPherson for bringing Millay’s poem to my attention.
-
- 41.
Adrienne Raphael “Reading a Dysfunctional World,” available online at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/143711/reading-a-dysfunctional-world (accessed 9 December 2021).
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages (New York, San Diego and London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), 522–23.
- 44.
John Berryman, “Dream Song 36” in The Dream Songs (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 40.
- 45.
Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers, eds Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (New York: Norton, 1977), 505.
- 46.
Ibid., 480.
Works Cited
Berryman, John. The Dream Songs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.
———. Love & Fame. Rev. Ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972.
Blackmur, R.P. “Statements and Idyls.” Poetry 46.2 (May 1935): 108–12.
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages. New York, San Diego and London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994.
Bryant, Jr., J.A. “R.P. Blackmur: Making Peace with Disorder.” The Sewanee Review 97.1 (Winter 1989): 153–62.
Burt, Stephanie. “Berryman.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70304/ws-merwin-berryman.
Dunbar, William. “The Lament for the Makaris.” In Priscilla Bawcutt, ed. Selected Poems. London and New York: Longman, 1996: 105–10.
Hoffman, Eric. Ed. Conversations with John Berryman. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2021.
Merwin, W.S. Summer Doorways. Berkeley, CA: Shoemaker Hoard, 2005.
Raphael, Adrienne. “Reading a Dysfunctional World.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/143711/reading-a-dysfunctional-world.
Reiman, Donald H. and Sharon B. Powers, eds Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. New York: Norton, 1977.
Weber, Brom. Ed. The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane. New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1966.
Wells, Stanley and Gary Taylor, eds The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
Wiegers, Michael. Ed. The Essential W.S. Merwin. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2017.
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Coleman, P. (2022). “High Company”: W.S. Merwin, John Berryman and the Art of Poetry. In: Langdell, C.C. (eds) Reading W.S. Merwin in a New Century. American Literature Readings in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13157-8_2
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