John Berryman: Selected Poems

edited by kevin young

"Staggering, swaggering, intoxicating": John Berryman achieved a poetry where (in the words of editor Kevin Young) "protagonists search for a lover or friend, ancestor or listener, with a recklessness that only Whitman allowed himself. . . . Berryman becomes Everyman attempting, falling short of, and often achieving greatness." Young's selection, the first new selection of Berryman's poems in over 30 years, encompasses the formal accomplishments of his early work, epitomized in the masterful Homage to Mistress Bradstreet; the explosive and mesmerizing diction of Dream Songs, and his wrenching religious poems.

Berryman photo by Terrence Spencer/© Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Young photo © Greg Whitaker.