#38

http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/Dream_Song_38_The_Russian_grin_bellows_his_condolence_by_John_Berryman_analysis.php

The names in the 2^nd & 3^rd lines refer to a messy love affair—secretary/mistress (?) to whom Frost proposed while she was still married, her husband, Frost’s wife, and a friend. My take is simply to acknowledge that love and life can be messy—sometimes really messy. He who is heading for the pantheon of the greats, to duke it out with Horace, et al., also lived a life with all its anxiety, frustration and squalor down here. That’s still always the foundation of the fame industry. But there needs to be more, which Henry puzzles over in the 2^nd stanza. It’ll come with pain and mystery, and best to leave it alone. Chasing fame on its own is certainly possible, and some get it, but that’s a hollow pursuit in the end. Pursue the mystery with integrity instead, and leave that other stuff alone. As for the rest of us: Just listen.

Berryman was ambitious, I’ll say that for him. Aiming for The Pantheon. He was a mess too.

Here’s a poem that came this morning from looking at the weedy urban woods I see out the window of my study:

Invasives

English ivy colonizes the oaks

That bear an alien green canopy
In the snow and chill of February.
Thickets of honeysuckle
Crowd their trunks and shade-stomp
Their sprouting acorns. Garlic mustard
Poisons the soil and yellows
The delicate trilliums,
Wise native beauties
Older than the trees above them.
We don’t approve this invasion
The forest seems to say.
You’ll never belong here.
Riches of light and soil
Are for those with the right
To take them, the English
Ivy responds. As it seems
You don’t approve, we suggest
You might talk to the poison ivy
Over there, but don’t touch.
They’re agile and irascible vines,
Who root with a toxic power,
And we especially admire them
In the fall, when they don
Their magnificent red coats.

KZ