Merwin, W. S.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics)

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Wonderful!
Love poems for all of us
One of my favorite writers
the most romantic book of love poems ever written
Beautiful, wrenching poetry

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics)
Pablo Neruda
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (Texas Pan American Series)
The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems
Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems (Edición bilingüe)
On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea
Odes to Common Things, Bilingual Edition

ASIN: 0143039962

Book Description

The Nobel Prize-winning poet's most popular work

When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful!.......2007-01-17

This book was very beneficial as I translated some of the poems myself. It allowed me to compare differences in the two translations and choose which was most accurate.

Love poems for all of us.......2007-01-09

Our Spanish is weak, mine much weaker than hers, but the language speaks, the tone of the language sings, as we sit on a beach and share these beatiful poems, in words we understand, and sounds we listen to.

One of my favorite writers.......2006-08-15

In this duel language edition, the voice is soft, sincere, and refreshing. His language borders on a passion that seems to rouse the senses like skydiving, or waiting for first rain. I recommend this book and all his books to the poetry reader.

the most romantic book of love poems ever written.......2006-04-07

perhaps this is the most romantic and most beautiful book of love poems ever written. every word, every stanza is so easily read, so quickly understood, like an arrow to the heard. give this gift to your lover and they will never forget it.

Beautiful, wrenching poetry.......2004-07-30

A beautiful gift for a lover. Perfect Valentine's Day gift or some other romantic moment. Draw a bath for them, light a candle, pour some wine, and sit and read them some of these often torrid poems. You will thank me later! MUCH later!

Walden and Civil Disobedience (150th Anniversary) (Signet Classics)

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He heard a different drummer- The sun is but a morning star
Isolate, Nonconformist
Ho hum
The book that started it all?
Manifesto of U.S. Radicalism

Walden and Civil Disobedience (150th Anniversary) (Signet Classics)
Henry David Thoreau
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0451529456
Release Date: 2004-08-03

Book Description

Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden, is a collection of his reflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings-as well as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government's interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature.

Customer Reviews:

He heard a different drummer- The sun is but a morning star.......2006-01-15

Thoreau is more than simply a writer who produced a great American classic. He exemplified the idea which perhaps as much as any other has come to be at the heart of the American creed. "If a man does not keep pace to his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Throreau when he went into the woods of Walden Pond on July 4, 1845 , a journey in solitude which would last just two years and two months, was the archetypal American individualist. He was the man 'doing his own thing' living in accordance with what only he could know was right for himself. This idea of 'radical individualism' has become part of the American common faith. Its abuses are legion and may be disastrous, but it also has brought about not simply 'better mousetraps' but a whole vast world of innovations and innovators, the like of which Mankind has never known before.

Thoreau as he writes in his introduction went to the woods to explore not simply the natural world, the outdoors he so much loved. He went to the woods to truly go more deeply into and know himself. As he says in his introduction:

" I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me."

Thoreau in that enigmatic, epigrammatic aphoristic style, he shared with his great mentor and fellow pioneering poet- philosopher, Emerson connects the world within with the world without , connects the Concord woods with the Cosmos . He creates a work in 'Walden' of singular beauty and of its own special economy and principles in thought.

Thoreau was too an abolitionist, an opponent of the Mexican war, a civil disobedient who refused to pay the poll tax-, a pioneer
whose followers would include Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

But in his close looking at the world of nature and the world of himself he was first a great explorer of life and reality going out alone in his own way- however geographically close he may have been to home.

His words and his wisdom waken us even today to the hope of new and better worlds i.e. he also embodied the spirit of a great American optimism.

The great individual teaches us even in dark hours to find new worlds in ourselves outside our own darknesses. " There are new worlds yet to be born" he writes, " The sun is but a morning star"

Isolate, Nonconformist.......2003-10-14

Thoreau lived for two years and two months at Walden Pond. He said the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. Henry Thoreau asked hard questions.

He related that when the Masschusetts Bay Colony was founded, earthen houses were built. They were convenient and suitable and they had the advantage of putting everyone in a position of equality and not making the poorer inhabitants feel discouraged. It distressed Thoreau that a good deal of the money spent for shelter and dress was for show, uneconomical.

He farmed organically because he was only a squatter. He found that by working for about six weeks he could meet all of the annual expenses of living. He claimed that memorable events transpired in the morning.

Thoreau went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately. The sounds of the railroad penetrated the woods. Visitors were frequent during three seasons. In the wintertime basically he had only himself for company and some of the animals.

In any season, the woods were surprisingly dark at night. Because he had no helpers or animals to assist him in cultivating the fields he felt that he ws more intimate with the beans in his beanfield. Songs have suggested that husbandry is a sacred art.

The scenery of Walden was on a humble scale. The first ice was especially interesting. He reported seeing fox, jays, chickadees, and red squirrels in the the winter.

In CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE he asserts that in a government that imprisons unjustly, the place of a just man is in prison. Thoreau underwent an overnight jail stay when he failed to pay a poll tax.

Ho hum.......2003-07-21

Isn't it a little bit incongruous to desire to detach yourself from society, seeking self-reliance, and then write a book about it? Just an observation...

While Thoreau is a curious individual - sort of a poor-man's G.K. Chesterton - he always seems to come up short. The Virtue of Civil Disobedience reads more like self-satire than a serious attempt at political philosophy. And while Walden is rich and fulfilling, it is ultimately just a vehicle for Thoreau to make baseless claims predicated upon his treasury of tidbits and odd knowledge.

Had Thoreau been blessed with living in the modern world, he could have just written "Living by a Pond on Your Own For Dummies" and saved himself (and us) a lot of trouble.

Instead of "Civil Disobedience," I recommend anything by Lysander Spooner (particularly "No Treason")

Instead of "Walden" I recommend "Two Years Before the Mast." It's both more relevant than Walden, and a heck of a lot Closer To Nature.

The book that started it all?.......2001-11-18

Compared to books such as "Voluntary Simplicity" by Duane Elgin and similar books, one realises that many of these ideas are nothing new when one reads Walden by Thoreau. In fact, what strikes me is that we as a Western society have not overcome many of the issues pointed out by Thoreau 150 years ago. Thoreau left Concord MA "disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism", the slavish materialism of that society then. One wonders what he'll say if he would see the extend today - in the post Coca-Cola society. But then Thoreau was a man who clearly stepped to his own drum. Becuase of slavery, he refused to support the state on moral grounds. How would his views have been tolerated today?

I am not luddite, but my favourite quote from the book is this: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing to communicate". Does this say something about the Internet, newsmedia and our contemporary information overload, or what?

I liked the introduction and footnotes of Meyer. Just enough to provide context and explanation, but never intrusive. This book is as relevant today as it was during Thoreau's lifetime. Highly recommended.

Manifesto of U.S. Radicalism.......2001-06-01

H.D. Thoreau is the first and most important figure in U.S. Radicalism. This collection provides the essential background for the latent radicalism inherent in American politics, especially as it was vocalized in the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the 1960's.

Disobedience is the shorter of the texts, but probably more important. It is an attempt to justify moral anarchism and a call to act on individual judgements about justice.

Walden can be interpreted as an important treatise against consumerism and the dangers of specialization, as well as an appreciation of the natural environment. Those interested in anti-globalization/anti-free trade movements would do well to read Walden to gain an understanding of where anti-consumerism came from and an examination of its ethical implications. However, it also pays to remember that Walden is a failed experiment and, in the end, Thoreau returns to Cambridge.

Thoreau, as political philosophy, has certain problems. Moral anarchy and denial of the social contract is difficult to replace in civil society--Thoreau makes no more than the most vague references as to what could replace it, seeming to rely on the fact that his personal sense of justice is universal.

Nevertheless, Thoreau's conscience has resonance and is as relevant today as ever. His rejection of consumerism as the basis for society and its stratification also teaches important lessons.

Book Description

The definitive volume from "one of America's greatest living poets."-The Washington Post Book World

A powerful case can be made for declaring W.S. Merwin the most influential American poet of the last half-century. Migration: New & Selected Poems is that case.

As an undergraduate at Princeton, Merwin was advised by John Berryman to "get down on your knees and pray to the muse every day." Over the last 50 years, Merwin's muse led him beyond the traditional verse of his early years to revolutionary open forms that engaged a vast array of influences and possibilities. As Adrienne Rich wrote of W.S. Merwin's work, "I would be shamelessly jealous of this poetry, if I didn't take so much from it into my own life."

From Once in Spring

A sentence continues after thirty years
it wakes in the silence of the same room
the words that come to it after the long comma
existed all that time wandering in space
as points of light travel unseen through ages
of which they alone are the measure and arrive
at last to tell of something that came to pass
before they ever began or meant anything

Migration is the distillation of a profound body of work. Drawing the best poems from his acclaimed 17 books, and including a selection of new poems, Migration is the definitive Merwin volume. It embodies his evolving poetic style, commitment to bearing witness, and artistic and political nerve. There is nothing quite like this in American poetry.

Poet and translator W.S. Merwin has received nearly every major literary accolade, including the Pulitzer Prize, Tanning Prize and Bollingen Prize. He has long been committed to artistic, political and environmental causes in both word and deed; when presented with the Pulitzer Prize, he donated the prize money to artists and the draft resistance. He currently lives in Hawaii, where he cultivates endangered palm trees.

Customer Reviews:

W.S. Merwin: A Poet of Vision and Connection.......2006-12-01

At last there is a significantly large volume of the majestic poetry of W.S. Merwin. Not that all of his other volumes of poems published through the years by Copper Canyon Press have been minor: the length of the books does not begin to mimic the towering power of his work.

But here in MIGRATION: NEW & SELECTED POEMS we have enough of his life's work to truly appreciated the fact that he is an exceptional thinker, artist, involved human being, as well as a gifted man of letters. Winning the National Book Award in 2005 this volume belongs in the collection of everyone concerned with great literature and great poetry. Spanning from the past forty odd years of writing, the collection presents some of his finest older works as well as introducing some of the mystical new works that edge him toward Poet Laureate of America. Example:
Lark

In the hour that has no friends
above it
you become yourself
voice
black
star burning in cold heaven
speaking well of it
as it falls from you
upward

Fire
by day
with no country
where and at what height
can it begin
I the shadow
singing I
the light

This book is rich in such wonders. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, November 06

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Book of Fables
W. S. Merwin
Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Present Company
Falling Man: A Novel

ASIN: 1556592566

Book Description

"Metaphors, puns, surrealist visions, converted into sharp, disturbing little narratives . . . only a poet, and a good one, could have written it."-The Atlantic Monthly

W.S. Merwin's acclaimed short prose-many of which first appeared in The New Yorker-blur the distinction between fiction, poetry, essay, and memoir. Reminiscent of Kafka, Borges, and Beckett, they evoke mythical patterns and unlikely adventures and raise questions about art, reality, and meaning. As the Saturday Review remarked, they have "astonishing range and power."

The Book of Fables is an affordable paperback of all the short prose from two out-of-print collections, The Miner's Pale Children and Houses and Travellers. The pieces run from a single sentence to a dozen pages and create a poetic landscape both severe and sensuous.

From "A Garden":

You are a garden into which a bomb once fell and did not explode, during a war that happened before you can remember. It came down at night. It screamed, but there were so many screams. It was heard, but it was forgotten. It buried itself. It was searched for but it was given up. So much else had been buried alive . . .

Book Description

Antonio Porchia (1886â€“1968) wrote one book, a slender collection of poetic aphorisms that became a classic in the Spanish-speaking world. With affinities to Taoist and Buddhist epigrams, Voices bears witness to the awe of human existence. Revised and updated with a new introduction by translator W.S. Merwin, this bilingual volume brings back into print one of Latin America's great literary treasures.

He who tells the truth says almost nothing. * I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received. * Only a few arrive at nothing, because the way is long. * Out of a hundred years a few minutes were made that stayed with me, not a hundred years. * When I come upon some idea that is not of this world, I feel as though this world had grown wider. * This world understands nothing but words, and you have come into it with almost none. * We become aware of the void as we fill it.

Antonio Porchia (1886â€“1968) was born in Italy. After his father died, he emigrated to Argentina with his mother and seven siblings, and as the eldest child, started working at the age of 14. He was self-taught, and his only book, Voices, caught the attention of a noted French critic who assumed him to be a scholar of Kafka and Buddhism, rather than the humble man who loved to tend his garden. Today, Porchia's aphorisms are published in more than a dozen Spanish-language editions as well as in German, French and Italian.

W.S. Merwin's awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. He is the author of dozens of books of poetry and translations. He lives in Hawaii.

Customer Reviews:

Distillations .......2006-11-09

Antonio Porchia (1886 - 1968) emigrated from his native Italy to Argentina where he became somewhat of an enigmatic poet, a poet while recognized during his lifetime is growing in popularity now, much to the superb translations by W.S. Merwin. Oddly enough Porchia's output was limited to one book, so becoming an avid fan of his thoughts placed so carefully on the printed page takes only a small book (127 pages) to absorb.

But what lines of beauty he created! Some examples:

Suffering does not follow us. It goes before us.
*
More grievous than tears is the sight of them.
*
Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed?

Porchia's pregnant lines find a home in our minds, in our hearts, and give us encouragement and those particular words to share with our own psyches as well as the agonies of loved ones. He was a gifted writer and W.S. Merwin has done a fine job in reassuring us that his words remain alive. Grady Harp, November 06

extraordinary.......2005-08-20

Porchia never ceases to amaze; on the shelf next to Thoreau and Emerson, he fits perfectly. I agree with the first reviewer; buy ten and give nine to your closest friends.

Life is incomplete without certain things; this is definitely one of them.

Savor like chocolate.......2005-08-04

Each aphorism is a statement from a knowing heart that has experienced peace and happiness from the inside. Read this and enjoy the nectar of a spare few words that say it all. Don't interpret what he says. Feel it.

unmissable.......2003-08-15

wonderful to see this book back in print again. no one has read it, and everyone should. a classic of 'wisdom literature'; porchia was right up there, in his own quiet and modest way, with cioran and lichtenberg - i.e. he's one of the few writers actually worth committing to memory. buy ten and give nine away to your most thoughtful friends.

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Gorgeous and ethereal
Simply a magical book!
Photographic Art
The Architect's Brother
Surprised

The Architect's Brother
Robert Parkeharrison , and W. S. Merwin
Manufacturer: Twin Palms Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0944092845

Customer Reviews:

Gorgeous and ethereal.......2007-05-20

This book plays with reality, is beautiful, is provocative (in certain ways), and encourages revisits.

Simply a magical book!.......2007-04-16

So different, so wonderful, so thought-provoking. This book of photographs is amazing. Each photo tells a story, or many stories, or creates an emotion that's hard to pin down. This is a large bound book, of high quality. I'm astounded at the price. This is truly a book to keep for life. I took it to work, and people lined up to look at it, one co-worker offered to buy it from me for $10 more than I paid for it :) (no way!)

Photographic Art.......2007-03-30

Recently on PBS, I saw a small clip of the collaboration work of the photographer (who is also the subject in the photographs) and his painter wife. The artistic creation of staging and dark room manipulations were something no one produces but these two. Results are reminiscent of a strange dream or turn of the century photography of catastrophic Earth events. I had to find a book of their work. The first books I found were $300. but fortunately found a much better priced one. I not only wanted it for myself and friends, but also to hand it down to one of my grandkids. Thank you Mr/Mrs. ParkHarrison for your unusual vision and I hope to see your future productions.

The Architect's Brother.......2006-01-30

Wow. That's how I'm going to start this off. My first inkling was to give the book four stars, you know, seem objective to the reader, maybe have a bigger influence. The truth is objectivity has nothing to do with this book. It is full of magic, suprise, wonder: nothing but true subjectivity. That is where its beauty lies, like a receiving a small bit of mail from an unknown sender, each page is a tale for you to tell, as well as ParkeHarrison. By far my favorite photography book, second only to Rocky Schenk, Photographs. Highly Recommended, also beautifully bound and LARGE. Take it from this poor college student, well worth the money.

Surprised.......2005-12-17

This is one of the weirdest photography books I have ever read...and enjoyed looking!

The author drives the reader through an interesting dream-like world created meticulously just for the shots in this book.

All these stupendous images generate lots of meditations and new ideas not only related to the topic of photography but to the way we experience life.

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In Parenthesis (New York Review Books)
David Jones
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

War | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Her Privates We
Under Fire (Penguin Classics)
The Return of the Soldier (Modern Library Classics)
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry: Revised Edition (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)

ASIN: 1590170369
Release Date: 2003-07-31

Book Description

"This writing has to do with some things I saw, felt, and was part of": with quiet modesty, David Jones begins a work that is among the most powerful imaginative efforts to grapple with the carnage of the First World War, a book celebrated by W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot as one of the masterpieces of modern literature. Fusing poetry and prose, gutter talk and high music, wartime terror and ancient myth, Jones, who served as an infantryman on the Western Front, presents a picture at once panoramic and intimate of a world of interminable waiting and unforeseen death. And yet throughout he remains alert to the flashes of humanity that light up the wasteland of war.

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Zen Wave

A Zen Wave: Basho's Haiku and Zen
Matsuo Basho
Manufacturer: Shoemaker & Hoard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1593760086

Book Description

Zen Buddhism distinguishes itself by brilliant flashes of insight and its terseness of expression. The haiku verse form is a superb means of studying Zen modes of thought and expression, for its seventeen syllables impose a rigorous limitation that confines the poet to vital experience. Here haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-94) — the greatest Japanese haiku poet — are translated by Robert Aitken, with commentary that provides a new and deeper understanding of Basho's work than ever before. In presenting themes from the haiku and from Zen literature that open the doors both to the poems and to Zen itself, Aitken has produced the first book about the relationship between Zen and haiku. His readers are certain to find it invaluable for the remarkable revelations it offers.

Customer Reviews:

Zen Wave.......2006-11-05

This book is an early work by a respected and cherished Zen adept. For this reader it lacks depth and breadth but should appeal to a beginner.

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Loose Ballads
To like without much understanding
Essential 20th Century Literature
once did seem on henry's side
Curses John Berryman

The Dream Songs
John Berryman
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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John Berryman: Collected Poems 1937-1971
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The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Above the River: The Complete Poems
Selected Poems: Expanded Edition, including selections from Day by Day

ASIN: 0374530661
Release Date: 2007-04-17

Book Description

This edition combines The Dream Songs, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969 and contains all 385 songs. Of The Dream Songs, A. Alvarez wrote in The Observer, “A major achievement. He has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself.”

Customer Reviews:

Loose Ballads.......2005-09-28

At first, I didn't find much to rejoice about in this collection of poems. The expectation Berryman sets up with his title is deceptive. I found little evidence of "dream." What I mean is that I found this writing highly literal, straight-forward and self-conscious, i.e. the antithesis of dreamy. Secondly, "songs" troubled me. One of the thing that distinguishes poetry from prose is poetry's musicality. And having "songs" in the title of a collection hints that there may be lyricism within. However, I found the diction flabby, the tone impotent and therefore lacking any semblance of lyricism. Perhaps what Berryman meant by "songs" is this: Perhaps these poems are loose ballads (without the envoi and without the predicable rhyming scheme). Ballades address an important person (Henry, in this case) and sums up the point of the poems.

It's terrible to sum-up a collection of poems (or is The Dream Songs considered one poem in parts?), but here goes: Basically, in each section we have the protagonist, Henry, in various situations, or in mere contemplation. The forward for this book is interesting in that, along the lines of Pound and Eliot, Berryman has made a concerted effort to inform his readership that this is, indeed, a persona poem, and therefore, not to be confused with a biographical poem. Perhaps what Berryman has produced here is an eclogue. An eclogue is a poem "written in the form of a monologue or dialogue in which the speaker tells us what he feels about a particular theme (and why) and why others ought to feel that same way (from Handbook of Poetic Forms)." When I approach these poems as bucolics (or, eclogues), Berryman's craft and the poems' meanings open up for me. Otherwise, these seem banally idea-driven and terribly discursive in that they're sometimes laden with private references. For example, the opening few lines: "Huffy Henry hid the day,/ unappeasable Henry sulked./ I see his point,-- a trying to put things over."

The best way to enter these poems, then, is to embrace Berryman's eclogues as a means to engaging with the main character, Henry. Because these poems are character-driven, the language is conversational, idiosyncratic, and at times, pedestrian (like how most of us are just plain boring in our impromptu conversations). In this sense, these poems have an immediacy to them; the reader can almost hear Henry's diatribes straight from his mouth. However, Henry is not without pithy insight. In part #28 Henry displays his humor and resign: "If I had to do the whole thing over again/ I wouldn't." At times these sections begin with such intrigue, they reel-in the reader. Part #44 begins: "Tell it to the forest fire, tell it to the moon." And at times, the readers are reminded of the fact that Henry's merely a character in Berryman's head. These last two lines of part #74, "Henry mastered, Henry/ tasting all the secret bits of life." And that's just what we get from these Dream Songs, bits of a Berryman character in all his intricacies, both commonplace and celebratory.

To like without much understanding.......2004-11-09

I am not very knowledgable about Berryman and his work. I certainly have not read the poems with the time and intensity of a number of the reviewers on this site. I have an impression of Berryman and his work. It is of something vaguely likeable occaisionally able to provide a line which hits home. It is of a very variable voice in which the disorder and the breakdown somehow make the text too mixed- up.
Perhaps this is unfair. Bellow thought Berryman the best, and among other poets he too was understood as one of the best of his time.
Perhaps then I should let his lines , lines of one sonnet at least speak for themselves:

These lovely motions of the air, the breeze,
tell me I'm not in hell, thojugh round me the dead
lie in their limp postures
dramatizing the dreadful word 'instead'
for lively Henry, fit for debaucheries
and bird- of- paradise vestures

only his heart is elsewhere , down with them
& down with Delmore specially, the new ghost
haunting Henry most:
though fierce the claims of others, coimedela crime
came the Hebrew spectre , on a note of woe
and Join me O.

'Down with them all!'Henry suddenly cried
Their deaths were theirs. I wait on for my own,
I dare say it won't be long,
I have tried to be them, god knows I have tried,
but they are past it all, I have not done,
which brings me to the end of this song.

Essential 20th Century Literature.......2004-04-15

Berryman's dream song sequence demonstrates how to create a series of related poems, without rigid constraints beyond trying to maintain a certain length. Some are self-standing like #28 "Snow Line" while others require some knowledge of the series characters Henry and Mr. Bones. Everything seems topical: relationships, politics, writers, and even the everyday. Berryman frequently inverts syntax for striking effects. Most of the dream songs make a strange statement and build off of it such as "Life, Friends, is boring. We must not say so." (#14) or "Bats have no bankers and they do not drink." (#63) I admire the scope of topics such as work, love, and writing that are still relevant today and the seemingly matter-of-fact way Berryman writes, which often produces hilarious results, such as the case of the two previously mentioned poems. In one of the later songs he even takes on himself "The only happy people in the world/ are those who do not have to write long poems." (#354) The Dream Songs are crucial for anyone interested in 20th and even Contemporary Literature.

once did seem on henry's side.......2004-03-28

i once heard about a man who tried to pay for his drinks at a bar with a page of this book. it didn't work but he truly believed (as do i) that you should be able to use pages from John Berryman's Dream Songs as currency. i became obsessed with it instantly, and its importance to me is something difficult to explain. so i won't. but as much as i hate to use this expression, this is a book that changed my life. that's enough of that, mr. bones.

Curses John Berryman.......2003-07-30

Curse you John Berryman! You have ruined my ear for other poets. THE DREAM SONGS is one of those award-winning modern epics you wonder why you are reading until near the end, when you realize that you have slipped completely into the author's syntaxes, thoughts and, yes, dreams.

Don't let Berryman in his forward tell you different: this book is baldly autobiographical. Berryman dubbed himself Henry, gave a voice to his traumatized psyche (Mr. Bones) and set them talking, unraveling a lifetime of scholarship mixed with pain.

If you have read about Berryman, you will see him instantly in THE DREAM SONGS. Yet, unlike Robert Lowell, Berryman doesn't assume a familiarity with his biography that verges on solipsism. It is enough to know his father killed himself, Berryman killed himself, Berryman had affairs, was an alcoholic, was married several times and that he dearly loved literature, especially Shakespeare, some of whose Sonnets he parodies.

There is no narrative to the 385 Songs, per se. They come in thematic groups, which are grouped into seven 'books' and, like diary entries, chronicle whatever is on Henry's mind, which is often the untimely deaths other poets, such as Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath. Like most "modern" poetry, THE DREAM SONGS is a tough slog through sentences that may or may not make sense. Except if you read them enough and carefully, they start making sense. It's a magical effect, but not gained without some serious struggle.

The poems themselves are incomparable to anything I've read before. Berryman borrows aspects of African-American English and WCWesque directness. He composes dehydrated, idiosyncratically-punctuated sentences that straddle stanzas of six lines, often rhymed and never predictable in length. Individual lines sometimes break into startling caesuras or hover outside the regular three-of-six form. However inconsisent individually, the poems achieve a perverse (foolish?) consistency overall which, grasped, is that magical concussion I spoke of before. THE DREAM SONGS are nothing if not unique; I highly-recommend them as part of a balanced poetic diet.

Houses and Travellers
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Houses and Travellers
W. S. Merwin
Manufacturer: Owlet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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