#352

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Two things get established in this poem before it takes its turn. The first stanza: there were places where he worked well on his writing, even as he knew he was engaged in a long, long project. Simple enough. The second revelation is that he did other work all those years, when he taught, gave seminars, met students, “talked with human beings, / paid insurance & taxes; / but his mind was not on it.” (Many people doubtless can relate to this. I can.) Where was his mind then? We know, of course. It was on his art, all the other stuff was the support that gave his art the space it needed to come into being.

                                                   His mind was elsewhere

            in an area where the soul not talks but sings

& where foes are attacked with axes.

So, he sings, and that is wonderful. It is. But immediately here come the foes. I’ve noticed his easily wounded sensitivity to criticism before, his paranoia that the literary world was full of enemies out to destroy him. Here, he really goes with that. Obviously, he’s not attacking anybody with literal axes, and he’s not really fantasizing—or at least not fully fantasizing—about some literal barbarian world where if somebody insults you or pisses you off, you’re not fully a warrior if you don’t come after him or set up a duel, or otherwise do violence to him. The work of the artist for B. is a style of combat. He’s fantasizing himself a poet warrior; not a poet and a warrior, but poet-as-warrior. Well, the guy was oversensitive, reacting to slights even though the accolades clearly outweighed the slights in his career. And if he seems to be saying that he sees himself as a warrior, or at least a competitor, he’s certainly got a backhanded style about it. His Pussycat Henry alter-ego is not always up to confrontation with anybody, real or imagined. But he will sneak in an attack at any time if the coast is clear. The cowering persona of Henry is as much a ruse as anything. The third stanza continues with this, and then turns itself toward attack:

            Enemies his pilgrimage duly brought

            to bring him down, and they almost succeeded.

            He sang on like a harmful bird.

            His foes are like footnotes, he figured, sought

            chiefly by doctoral candidates: props, & needed,—

            comic relief,—absurd.

The “pilgrimage” is his work on this epic long poem, and there were poets who couldn’t or chose not to follow it. The poet Louise Bogan disliked 77 Dream Songs so much that she called B. the enemy of the English language. Some others just didn’t get it. One gets the picture of him pouring over the reviews, and if they were good, too much praise was not enough, but the negative reviews shone out and pierced like red lasers. But, honestly, if anybody almost succeeded in bringing him down, it was himself. But he sang on “like a harmful bird” and there’s more than a touch of bitter sarcasm in that phrase. In the end, he imagines the poets who don’t support him as mere footnotes in the progression of literary history of which he knows—in spite of his insecurity—that he’s played a significant part. It’s the worst thing he can think of to say to the likes of Louise Bogan, to call her a footnote, and as he wrote it I can imagine him picturing his righteous, gleaming axe cleaving her skull in twain.

There’s an awful lot of criticism and commentary out in the world that responds to Berryman’s humor. I’ve sampled it, but by no means has mine been a systematic and rigorous foray into the criticism. Enough to make me think that some of the criticism is clever, deep and thoughtful. But a lot of it builds, often in derivative ways, on what has been established by other critics. Much hard work has been done attempting to rescue The Dream Songs from accusations of bigotry, misogyny, and just simple poor taste, stuff that a writer would have a more difficult time passing off these days. (Enough do still manage it.) As for humor, some of the Dream Songs are downright funny, and more of them do have that tormented, twisted quality that makes the reader laugh, but out of discomfort or embarrassment more than anything, maybe in furtive recognition of how screwed up in sympathy we are to the twistings of this strung-out character. I can imagine that someone might want to respond to this DS 352 by invoking its sense of humor. Maybe. But I really don’t think this poem was meant to be funny. I think it’s serious; I think at the end he turns to voicing the ego-wounds that have built up—that he has listed and categorized and numbered, I just bet, according to frequency and severity—and he knows exactly who those “enemies” are. This is not some metaphoric imagining of a literary knighthood competition on the jousting court. He’s pissed. His fi-fi was wounded, and he’s consoling himself by saying, you’ll be forgotten in a hundred years, enemy: Take that! I suppose I find it a bit childish.