The heart is strange : new selected poems / John Berryman ; edited with an introduction by Daniel Swift

Author:: Berryman, John, 1914-1972
Uniform Title:: Poems. Selections
Published:: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Edition:: First edition.
Physical Description:: xxxv, 179 pages ; 24 cm
Additional Creators:: Swift, Daniel, 1977-

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Contents:

Machine generated contents note: From The Dispossessed (1948) -- Winter Landscape -- The Disciple -- A Point of Age, Part I -- The Traveller -- The Ball Poem -- The Spinning Heart -- The Possessed -- Parting as Descent -- World-Telegram -- The Animal Trainer (2) -- Desire Is a World by Night -- The Moon and the Night and the Men -- A Poem for Bhain -- Canto Amor -- The Nervous Songs -- Young Woman's Song -- The Song of the Demented Priest -- A Professor's Song -- The Captain's Song -- The Song of the Tortured Girl -- The Lightning -- The Long Home -- A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away -- New Year's Eve -- The Dispossessed -- The Cage (1950) -- Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1953) -- From His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt (1958) -- They Have -- The Poet's Final Instructions -- From The Black Book (iii) -- A Sympathy, A Welcome -- American Lights, Seen From Off Abroad -- Mr. Pou & the Alphabet (1961) -- Formal Elegy (1964) -- From Love & Fame (1970) -- Cadenza on Garnette -- Freshman Blues -- Images of Elspeth -- Two Organs -- Olympus -- The Heroes -- Recovery -- Transit -- Message -- The Minnesota 8 and the Letter-Writers -- Damned -- Despair -- The Hell Poem -- Eleven Addresses to the Lord -- 1."Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake" -- 2."Holy, as I suppose I dare to call you" -- 3."Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me" -- 4."If I say Thy name, art Thou there? It may be so" -- 5."Holy, & holy. The damned are said to say" -- 6."Under new management, Your Majesty" -- 7."After a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean" -- 8.A Prayer for the Self -- 9."Surprise me on some ordinary day" -- 10."Fearful I peer upon the mountain path" -- 11."Germanicus leapt upon the wild lion in Smyrna" -- From Delusions, Etc. (1972) -- Opus Dei -- Lauds -- Matins -- Prime -- Interstitial Office -- Terce -- Sext -- Nones -- Vespers -- Compline -- In Memoriam (1914--1953) -- Tampa Stomp -- The Handshake, The Entrance -- Henry by Night -- Henry's Understanding -- Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up -- A Usual Prayer -- `How Do You Do, Dr Berryman, Sir?' -- King David Dances -- From Henry's Fate & Other Poems, 1967--1972 (1977) -- "Canal smell. City that lies on the sea like a cork" -- "Gulls chains voices bells: honey we're home" -- "Henry under construction was Henry indeed" -- "Long (my dear) ago, when rosaries" -- "With arms outflung the clock announced: Ten-twenty" -- "Good words & irreplaceable: serenade, schadenfreude" -- "I'm reading my book backward. It sounds odd" -- Phase Four.

Summary:

"A lively sampling from the work of one of the most celebrated and daring poets of the twentieth century John Berryman was perhaps the most idiosyncratic American poet of the twentieth century. Best known for the painfully sad and raucously funny cycle of Dream Songs, he wrote passionately: of love and despair, of grief and laughter, of longing for a better world and coming to terms with this one. The Heart Is Strange, a new selection of his poems, along with reissues of Berryman's Sonnets, 77 Dream Songs, and the complete Dream Songs, marks the centenary of his birth. The Heart Is Strange includes a generous selection from across Berryman's varied career: from his earliest poems, which show him learning the craft, to his breakthrough masterpiece, "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet," then to his mature verses, which find the poet looking back upon his lovers and youthful passions, and finally, to his late poems, in which he battles with sobriety and an increasingly religious sensibility. The defiant joy and wild genius of Berryman's work has been obscured by his struggles with mental illness and alcohol, his tempestuous relationships with women, and his suicide. This volume, which includes three previously uncollected poems and an insightful introduction by the editor Daniel Swift, celebrates the whole Berryman: tortured poet and teasing father, passionate lover and melancholy scholar. It is a perfect introduction to one of the finest bodies of work yet produced by an American poet"--
"): A new selection of John Berryman's work, in honor of the poet's centenary"--

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ISBN:

9780374221089 (hardback)
0374221081 (hardback)

View MARC record | catkey: 13595976