Berryman Reading

I would probably never have thought to write a poem 'about' (i.e. directly relating to) John Berryman if Philip Coleman hadn't decided to commission/invite a number of poets to contribute to his anthology Berryman's Fate, celebrating the poet's centenary. Berryman is a fantastic poet, though I would never claim to understand most, or even much, of his work. I know him chiefly through a number of his 'Dream Songs', whose images and rhythms (and startling vernaculars) which have stayed with me over the years. Who else could have written 'Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so' or 'Rilke was a jerk' or 'Hard on the land wears the strong sea / and empty grows every bed'?

The book was launched tonight in the Irish Writers' Centre, and I was invited to read with a selection of the other poets. Some couldn't make it but most were there, and the audience, for a poetry reading, was very respectable (without being too respectful). Here's my own wee contribution, which refers to an old film clip of another, altogether different, poetry reading, by the man himself, in a Dublin pub in 1967:

Berryman In Ryan’s, 1967

No wonder. Here’s a hunched
serious man being serious
as a leap in the dark, pal, for sure.
So much so
it’s almost caricature. Eyes’
headbeams blaze and slumber

framed in black specs heavy
as a library, and that great
Father Time beard poring
over and into –– what? Well, I guess
it may as well be us
boring. I don’t see

anyone else here besides
those who are always missing. I don’t know
what dreams in there: a drift
of empty beds, horizons hard
as winter, something low and far
too high for any stumbler.