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 University Press, 1988.

INTERVIEWER:  Is there any ulterior structure to The Dream Songs?

Ah–you mean, somebody can get to be an associate professor or an assistant professor by finding it out? Mr. Plotz, there is none.  Il n’y en a pas! There’s not a trace of it. Some of the Songs are in alphabetical order; but, mostly, they just belong to areas of hope and fear that Henry is going through at a given time. That’s how I worked them out.

…

INTERVIEWER:  So, in fact, the book has no plot?

Those are fighting words. It has a plot. Its plot is the personality of Henry as he moves on in the world.

…

INTERVIEWER:  Why is Henry called “Mr. Bones”?

There’s a minstrel show thing of Mr. Bones and the interlocutor. There’s a wonderful remark, which I meant to use as an epigraph, but I never got around to it. “We were all end-men,” Plotz–that’s what it says–“We were all end-men.”

INTERVIEWER: Who said that?

One of the great minstrels. Isn’t that adorable? “We were all end-men, and interlocutors.” I wanted someone for Henry to talk to, so I took up another minstrel, the interlocutor, and made him a friend of my friend Henry. He is never named; I know his name, but the critics haven’t caught on yet. Sooner or later some assistant professor will become an associate professor by learning the name of Henry’s friend.

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From “The Art of Poetry: An Interview with John Berryman,” Peter Stitt, originally published in The Paris Review 53, reprinted in Berryman’s Understanding: Reflections of the Poetry of John Berryman, edited by Harry Thomas, Northeastern University Press, 1988.

INTERVIEWER: You, along with Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and several others, have been called a confessional poet. How do you react to that label?

With rage and contempt! Next question.

INTERVIEWER: Are the sonnets confessional?

Well, they’re about her and me. I don’t know. The word doesn’t mean anything. I understand the confessional to be a place where you go and talk with a priest. I personally haven’t been to confession since I was twelve years old.

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