The title of this entry comes from John Berryman’s “Dream Song 39″ — it’s one I’ve always passed over, but it suddenly struck me today, if only for these lines:

our sad wil riffs come easy in that case,
thinking you over,
knowing you resting, who was reborn to rest,
your gorgeous sentence is done.

Brilliant.

I’ve been re-reading Berryman’s Dream Songs — which, I admit, I do every few months without prompting — after reading Beth Ann Fennelly’s take on his work in her new book, Unmentionables. Fennelly does an amazing job taking on Berryman’s language and form, but as much as I am interested in the similarities between the series, I’m perhaps more interested in the differences. As the title suggests, Fennelly’s poems take as their subject all of those things which are unmentionable in our society — the heedless impulses of destruction which lead us to tip an innocent cow just because we can, the presence of lust in places which we consider lustless, the insistence of lusts we don’t want to be lusting, the insistence of memories we don’t want to be insistent — even the idea that, at the bottom of it, our national obsession with nostalgia is essentially an obsession with ourselves, a kind of nationally authorized self-importance. I think that it’s arguable that Berryman’s poems often tread the same territory, but, whereas Berryman pften brought our Huffy Henry and Mister Bones as characters to voice his confession, Fennelly speaks through the sheer and stark I. It’s interesting to see the difference in tone this creates, and has lead me to re-imagine Berryman’s poems — what if “Henry” had always been “I”? How would the work be different?

Of course, Berryman does use the “I” — as he does in what is perhaps my favorite Dream Song — number 22, “Of 1826″ — and, as it is almost the fourth of July, I would be remiss if I did not post it! The poem refers to one of those weird facts of American history that fascinate me to no end — the fact that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4th, 1826. Incidentally, a friend once gave me a recording of Berryman reading this — it’s been a staple on my iTunes ever since. Definitely worth searching for — I tried to upload it, but couldn’t figure out how to do so. In vain, in vain, in vain, indeed.

Dream Song 22: Of 1826

I am the little man who smokes & smokes.
I am the girl who does know better but.
I am the king of the pool.
I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.
I am a government official & a goddamned fool.
I am a lady who takes jokes.

I am the enemy of the mind.
I am the auto salesman and lóve you.
I am a teenage cancer, with a plan.
I am the blackt-out man.
I am the woman powerful as a zoo.
I am two eyes screwed to my set, whose blind-

It is the Fourth of July.
Collect: while the dying man,
forgone by you creator, who forgives,
is gasping ‘Thomas Jefferson still lives’
in vain, in vain, in vain.
I am Henry Pussy-cat! My whiskers fly.