Berryman, John

Berryman, John bĕr´ēmən [key], 1914–72, American poet and critic, b. McAlester, Okla., as John Allyn Smith, Jr., grad. Columbia, 1936. His father committed suicide when he was 12; he took his stepfather's name when his mother subsequently remarried. From 1955 until his death he was on the faculty of the Univ. of Minnesota. Although he had published several volumes of poetry and a highly regarded biography of StephenCranew(1950),他的文学声誉as not established until the appearance ofHomage to Mistress Bradstreet(1956), a long dialogue in verse between Berryman and the ghost of AnneBradstreet. The volumes77 Dream Songs(1964; Pulitzer Prize) andHis Toy, His Dream, His Rest(1968) can be considered a two-part novel in verse in which the main character is a middle-aged teacher and lover named Henry, who is the voice of an anguished and trivial age.The Dream Songs(1969) brings together both books. Berryman committed suicide in 1972.Delusions, Etc.(1972), a volume of poems, andRecovery(1973), a novel, were published posthumously; in both the poet examines himself and his life—as it slips away—in intimate and harrowing detail. Berryman's other volumes of poetry includePoems(1942),The Dispossessed(1948),Berryman's Sonnets(1967), andLove and Fame(1971).

See selected poems ed. by K. Young (2004); study by J. M. Linebarger (1974).

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