What they actually did, to Henry, perhaps will show up in this long progression
of poems, and what “they” means will become clear. It doesn’t matter yet. But the
thought they thought they could do it? There’s the issue. Before the outrage
happens, before the hurt endured by one Henry after another in the world
arises, the extravagant arrogance of power imagines it first. Imagines an
action and won’t imagine the consequences, or does imagine consequence and
rationalizes it away, or just doesn’t care. That’s the appalling state of
things that Berryman invokes, right off the bat. We still see it everywhere, in
outrages as diverse as that Kentucky mountain blown to smithereens for the coal
inside, or that bank deemed “too big to fail”, the tyrant assumes power, this Black Site is established, that Senator
sponsors a bill written for him by a conservative think tank, those jobs of
half the town are shipped to India, this piece of information is attacked or
buried if it’s thought to threaten the stockholders’ profits. There’s a long,
long—long—list of this kind of thing that could follow. The marvels and grace of
the world compensate, but an outrage can march into some everyman Henry's orbit, and often
it destroys people.
I’ve known of this poem since I was twenty-three, yet I have
to confess now that this first one is making
me nervous. I’m going to immerse myself in this kind of thing for a year? Really?
Comfortable as I am, ensconced in all my privilege? I’ve been reading the news
the last couple years, though, and it bothers me enough and puts me sometimes
in a bad enough mood that I’m feeling it’s time to try and make something of it.
And I don’t forget that I’m vulnerable too, like Henry was, and it scares me. I’m
looking to Berryman for some guidance, maybe, although he was overcome by the
end. He drank to excess and eventually ended his own life. Nothing to that
extent, but I’ve hid the day and sulked, and it can make me wicked and away.
I’m a good artist, I can write, I have places to go and the company of dear
friends where I can find peace, I believe that my abilities as a teacher have
never been better. This all means something. But the news keeps coming. It’s a
wonder, all right, the world can bear & be. But Berryman here is right: this
Henry character should have come out and talked.
I’m thinking of Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech,
as depressing a thing as you’ll ever read, most of it: “Our tragedy today is a
general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even
bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the
question: When will I be blown up?” (Or when will I be thrown in the street? Or
how long till we all fry together in the warming climate?) Faulkner claims,
though, that humans won’t just endure all the evils they heap upon themselves,
they’ll prevail over them “because he has a soul, a spirit capable of
compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to
write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his
heart.” We’ll see if any hearts get lifted. But I guess all I’m saying here at first, is that even if
only a few friends, through nothing more than a sense of duty, listen, I intend
to come out and talk.
Here's Dream Song 1 for anyone like me who doesn't own a print copy.
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