author
John Berryman
1919–1988
A major American poet of the 20th century, he is best remembered for the restless, inventive Dream Songs, poems that mix wit, pain, and startling shifts in voice. His work helped define confessional poetry while still feeling formally daring and singular.
5 Audiobooks
The Right Time
by John Berryman
The Trouble with Telstar
by John Berryman
Modus Vivendi
by John Berryman
Card Trick
by John Berryman
Vigorish
by John Berryman
About the author
Born in Oklahoma in 1914, John Berryman became one of the most influential American poets of his generation. He studied at Columbia and at Cambridge, and later taught at several universities, including a long stretch at the University of Minnesota. Alongside his poetry, he was also a serious scholar and critic.
Berryman’s best-known work is The Dream Songs, a sequence centered on the troubled, darkly comic figure Henry. The poems brought him wide recognition, and 77 Dream Songs won the Pulitzer Prize, while the larger body of The Dream Songs also earned the National Book Award. He also wrote the important long poem Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and a biography of Stephen Crane.
His life was marked by personal turmoil, including struggles with alcohol and depression, and those pressures often echo through his writing. Even so, readers continue to return to his poems for their fierce intelligence, emotional honesty, and unusual music.