From: "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
> I adore Berryman but find myself, in the wake of my former
> brother-in-law's attempted suicide last week, coldblooded about his
> gift. Berryman seemed to have a reserve tank.
I think a bit of what impressed me about Berryman was just how long he
delayed his suicide. He seemed to have a death trip wired into his bones.
> though Auden's poem on Yeats is
> not exactly bad news either.
Slightly off the point, but as I was discussing this with Joanna Boulter
recently, the "official" (Collected) Auden chops a few quatrains:
QUOTE:
<<
Here are the Lost Stanzas from the Yeats Elegy. Auden cut out three -- you
remembered the first and I remembered the last:
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest;
William Yeats is laid to rest:
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
>>
UNQUOTE
The one who really makes my hair stand on end was Anne Sexton.
But to put it cruelly, a lot of this was both time and space bound -- there
was a certain phenomenon which embraced two generations of (US)American
poets -- the Berryman/Lowell generation and the Plath/Hughes generation --
and many of the first generation taught all too many of the second.
Give me a survivor any day -- in this area, I'd rather have Elizabeth Bishop
than Robert Lowell, and Anne Stevenson rather than Sylvia Plath.
As Dorothy Parker almost said, "You might as well love."
Robin
|