This Dream Song is okay because
for today there isn’t too much of despair, debauchery, alcoholism, etc. Some
whiskey, “tastes like California / but is Kentucky.” We make some fine whiskey
in Kentucky, which is great if you don’t go getting blinded on it. But, this
time it looks more like the warm whiskey is triggering nostalgia and memories
on a wintery night, immobile with a damaged ankle. Hey, I get as perturbed with
the phonies of the world, and down on myself, as the next guy. It drives me
some, too. But it’s nice to give it a rest now and then, and Christmas season
is perfect for that. Memories of California, driving to Big Sur, a hot spa bath
somewhere.
“Striding Edge” is a sharp
ridge-top on Mt. Helvellyn in the Lake District of northern England, where it
seems B. must have visited when he was 22. If there’s a downer side of this
poem it’s about aging, which we all lament. I do, a little, except that I’m
happier now by a long shot than I was in my early twenties. Still, does
Striding Edge block the sky as it did when he hiked it, back when he was 22?
Likely so, but broken-ankled Henry won’t know it, aging, not up to mountain
climbing anymore, and overall not well anyway. Is it better to look back on
your youth and realize you’ll never do again what you did so easily then? Or to
look back and regret that you didn’t do anything much, and now never will?
Rhetorical question. Melancholy nostalgia beats regret. Better yet to keep
looking forward.
I had a talk with a colleague
today, Jeff, about B. and this whole project. Not everyone likes John Berryman’s
work, turns, out! He does. But we agree that for some it must be an acquired
taste, if anything, like a strong, raw rye whiskey. (My dad told me once, “No
one likes his first dry martini.” My reponse: “Then why drink a second one?”)
He also thought that maybe The Dream
Songs, in their fractured hopelessness, appeal in some way to a younger
sensibility. My first reading of Gravity’s
Rainbow was all about being tickled by that novel’s mad, brilliant, and
adolescent smart-ass inventiveness. It wasn’t until my 3rd time
through, in a doctoral-level seminar with Tom LeClair, that the real impact of
that novel hit home. I’m in awe of it now. It’s a great book, but I acknowledge
that it’s probably not for everybody. Same with these Dream Songs.
Some of The Dream Songs are bigger and more profound than others. No
surprise there. This one is smaller, with a touch of cozy melancholy about it
(Miller’s odd-colored box aside), laid up alone at Christmas, thinking back on
younger days. The bourbon would be a warm touch too, except, well, he shoulda
laid off the bourbon. Not my call at this point. It’s cold and snowy here too,
and not being an alcoholic myself, I’m content with a modest measure of good
Four Roses here in front of the fire and thinking back on some of the great backpacking
trips I’ve gone on. Linville Gorge and Eagle Creek, both in North Carolina,
Strawberry Creek in Montana, flowing painful cold through the snowy July
mountains, where the brush, the trees overhead, and the piles and piles of
branches made for tough casting, but once the fly found the water the cutthroats
were eager to please. Now that was a day.
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