Alan Bleakley
Plymouth, United Kingdom

“Starts again always in Henry’s ears / The little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime,” writes American poet John Berryman (1914–1972) in “Dream Song 29.”¹ From a life of heavy drinking that served to mask the pain of chronic depression arose the legacy of his Dream Songs, told from the perspective of his alter ego (and conscience) “Henry”:

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
—“Dream Song 29”

In “Dream Song 125,” Berryman’s opening lines eerily foretell his suicide:

Bards freezing, naked, up to the neck in water,
wholly in dark, time limited, different from
initiations now

On a bitterly cold day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Berryman died after jumping from a bridge and crashing through an ice sheet draping the Mississippi River. He was fifty-seven years old.

A year after his death, a fictionalized version of his addiction treatment, Recovery,² was published. The name of the novel’s protagonist, Dr. Alan Severance, was a nod to Berryman’s feelings of disconnection surrounding his alcohol dependency, failed marriages, struggling faith, and even himself through the invention of personas.

On his addiction to smoking—three packs a day—Berryman (as “Henry”) demonstrates his self-deprecating humor. Getting ready to give a lecture, the poet:

… had smoked a pack of cigarettes by 10
& was ready to go. Peace to his ashes then,
poor Henry,
with all this gas & shit blowing through it
four times in 2 hours, his tail ached.
He arose, benign, & performed.
—“Dream Song 134”

Suicidal thoughts permeated Berryman’s work. In Recovery, Severance describes himself as being “in high spirits with a sinking heart.” Such duality is also a running theme in his poetry, even in his descriptions of his own appearance:

Fresh-shaven, past months & a picture in New York
of Beard Two, I did have Three took off. Well.
Shadow & act, shadow & act
—“Dream Song 119”

Given Berryman’s proclivity to drink himself senseless, pass out, wake up, and then vomit, having a beard could be a hazard, as described in the same poem: “It’s easier to vomit than it was, / beardless.”

Berryman does not describe swinging between alcohol binges and abstention. Drunkenness is the core state, but he oscillates between descriptions of his drinking as being debilitating (because he has to) and clarifying (because he wants to). On the former, his close friend Saul Bellow described Berryman turning up drunk for a reading in Chicago where “he coughed up phlegm” and “looked decayed.”² The reading was a disaster. Berryman muttered incoherently and intermittently shouted out passages so loud that it hurt the audience’s collective ear. After the reading, “he entered a waiting car, sat down, and vomited.” Later, he “passed out in his room … and slept through the Faculty party given in his honor. But in the morning he was full of innocent cheer. He was chirping … He was a full professor now, and a celebrity.”²

Much later, Berryman, in one of his last poems, wrote: “It seems to be dark all the time // … // I’m vomiting // … // I certainly don’t think I’ll last much longer.”³

In Recovery,Berryman slyly mocks psychologically-oriented therapies he had been part of in recovery groups, such as transactional analysis (TA). In TA, the client is urged to set up imaginary conversations between the child, adult, and parent ego states. In the story, one of the recovering alcoholics, George, is asked by the group facilitator Linc:

“Would you like to have a talk with your father?”
“… Yes, I would”
Okay! Linc got up and borrowed the nurse’s chair to put in front of George, facing him, empty.
“… What do you say to him?” Silence. “What do you say to him?”
“… I miss you a lot, Dad”²

Looking on, “Severance’s eyes filled with tears, his breathing was difficult.” Berryman would have identified with the separation anxiety on display. His own father shot and killed himself when Berryman was only eleven years old, as his parents were filing for divorce and his father had lost his job. Berryman struggled to come to terms with the loss.

Linc reminds George that it has been eleven years since his father died, yet George is still living in his father’s shadow despite his own successes. George then stands on his chair and shouts: “I did it!”² Linc ultimately responds, “It’s okay to feel okay, George. Remember that. It’s okay to feel okay.”² But, while Berryman describes Severance’s eyes as filling with tears, he is also parodying what he considered to be a feel-good therapy culture. Berryman preferred poetry over therapy as the medium for understanding his life.

There is overlap between Berryman’s depression, alcohol dependency, and poetry. He drank to relieve the depression that often ventured into suicidal ideation. Poetry sustained him for years, until his mental health and addictions claimed him. His poetry, however, remains his legacy.

References

1. Berryman, J. The Dream Songs. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014.
2. Berryman, J. Recovery. London: Faber and Faber, 1973.
3. Bellow, S. “John Berryman, Friend.” May 27, 1973. The New York Times.