Saturday, October 18, 2014

Age, and the deaths, and his ghosts: On the lives of John Berryman

Miranda Popkey - Work in progress
In 1967, the poet John Berryman - already a Pulitzer Prize winner for his 77 Dream Songs - was interviewed by the English critic A. Alvarez. The interview, which ran over the course of three days, was filmed for the BBC at a pub, Ryan's Beggars Bush, in Ballsbridge, Dublin, and it is from this footage that the clips of Berryman reading his Dream Songs - #14 and #29 - which now circulate on YouTube are drawn.

In so far as there is an image of Berryman that exists in the public imagination, these clips are its embodiment: the poet's beard is fulsome and his spectacles are large, black, and thickly-framed; he is wearing what might be a shoulder-padded overcoat. Berryman's delivery is stilted, almost unnervingly so: his speech is alternately halting and rushed; he gestures extravagantly; his head bobs and weaves. Berryman "was drunk during filming, as the attentive viewer may notice," runs the quippy description under the video, and sure, he was probably that too. More than drunk, though, he looks pained. Each word seems to come from a great distance, to emerge only after a violent struggle.

Read on...

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