Dream Song
The Life of John Berryman
The definitive biography of John Berryman, one of the twentieth century's foremost poets
Dream Song is the story of John Berryman, one of the most gifted poets of a generation that included Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Dylan Thomas. Using Berryman's unpublished letters and poetry, as well as interviews with those who knew him intimately, Paul Mariani captures Berryman's genius and the tragedy that dogged him while also illuminating one of the most provocative periods in American letters. Here we witness Berryman's struggles with alcohol and drugs, his obsession with women and fame, and his friendships with luminary writers of the century. Mariani creates an unforgettable portrait of a poet who, by the time of his suicide at age fifty-seven, had won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
Praise
“The ups and downs of Berryman's fascinating, excruciating life are beautifully retold. . . . A scrupulous, sensitive biography that is full of pity and wonder, that illuminates the life and searches out the myriad connections between the life and the work.”
— USA Today
“Impassioned. . . . A comprehensive, evenhanded, and psychologically acute picture of Berryman's simultaneous achievement and dissolution.”
— Chicago Tribune
“Conscientious, scrupulous, arduously researched.”
— Washington Post Book World
“This scrupulous, impassioned biography is harrowing to read, as it must have been to write. Following John Berryman through 'his various autobiographical guises,' and finding the poet`s 'highly original . . . manner of saying' to be 'oblique' and often 'delusory,' Paul Mariani has crafted a comprehensive, evenhanded and psychologically acute picture of Berryman`s simultaneous achievement and dissolution.”
— Chicago Tribune
“The best single volume on Berryman's life and work.”
— Kirkus Reviews