The Poetry Foundation has been busy. They conducted a study revealing that “the vast majority (90 percent) of American readers highly value poetry and believe it enriches the lives of those who read it.” Does that mean these people actively read poetry? Um, no. “Apart from brief, incidental encounters with poetry in public places, a […]

<p>While we’re here on our musical sojourn . . .</p> <p>As I think I’ve made clear, I’m not one for treacle.&nbsp; I think music and poetry have much larger roles to fulfill than just supplying &quot;pretty.&quot;&nbsp; Verse, whether read or sung, allows the transmission of giant, important truths of existence, whether they’re nice or not.&nbsp; […]

<p>I got a copy of <a href=”http://www.powells.com/biblio/0674018249″>this</a> the other day. I thought it might be nice to have a good collection of Emily Dickinson’s work, and you know, this was published by Harvard and all.&nbsp; It’s supposedly the authoritative one-volume edition of the extra super-duper authoritative multi-volume edition by the same scholar. Cool, right? </p> […]

You may know him as Will Oldham. You may know him as Palace, Palace Brothers or Palace Music. You may know him most recently under the wackiest of all pseudonyms, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. You may even know him from his cameos in funny little independent movies like Junebug. But truth be told, you’ve probably never […]

We’ll start talking about the big hard poems again soon, once our poor heads recover from work and such.  Until then, listen to William Elliott Whitmore.  I found out about the guy because he opened for the Pogues when we saw them a few months back.  He has the best-sounding banjo I’ve come across.  Banjos […]

I mentioned before that my first introduction to Berryman was Dream Song #14. It remains one of my favorite poems ever written, and knocks around in my brain the way “You do not do, you do not do / Anymore black shoe” and I grow old…I grow old…/ I shall wear the bottoms of my […]

Originally posted by Rachel   There’s a real post in progress, really, but first, I promised some more interview excerpts with Berryman. From “An Interview with John Berryman,” John Plotz, originally published in The Harvard Advocate 103,  no. 1, reprinted in Berryman’s Understanding: Reflections of the Poetry of John Berryman, edited by Harry Thomas, Northeastern […]

I haven’t fallen off the planet or anything, but the Knitting Olympics and trading offices with my husband have been monopolizing (biopolizing?) my time.  Done and done. I am normally the Queen of Class Participation.  I’ll try to be a better student from here on out. I finally got comfortable enough with my own version […]

So far, Berryman is all about rhythm for me.  And what’s weird is that the rhythm I find in the poems isn’t matching the rhythm Berryman uses in his readings.  So I’m going to ignore the poet’s literal voice for now, until I get more comfortable.  I’ve run across a number of poets whose readings […]

Originally posted by Rachel And now, as they say, for something completely different. John Berryman. The first time I read one of The Dream Songs, (#14, “Life Friends, is boring”) it was like walking out my front door one morning and discovering I was in Bora Bora. I had never read anything like it before […]