Jon Corelis wrote:
> Dream song 4
>
> by John Berryman
>
> Filling her compact & delicious body
> with chicken paprika, she glanced at me
> twice.
> Fainting with interest, I hungered back
> and only the fact of her husband & four other people
> kept me from springing on her
>
> or falling at her little feet and crying
> 'You are the hottest one for years of night
> Henry's dazed eyes
> have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon
> (despairing) my spumoni.—Sir Bones: is stuffed,
> de world, wif feeding girls.
>
> —Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes
> downcast ... The slob beside her feasts ... What wonders is
> she sitting on, over there?
> The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
> Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
> —Mr. Bones: there is.
>
Thank you for remembering this. I never pictured the woman as a
student, rather the wife or S.O. of another man ("The slob beside her")
at dinner. Yet who cares? The "speaker's" attitudes are in full view.
Berryman was not overly discreet. The Sonnets surely are not the only
extended presentation of an adulterous relationship, but they are
remarkable nonetheless for their level of indiscretion, and I suspect
retain a level of notoriety because they are "about" his adultery with
a Princeton graduate student. If Shakespeare was on the run from Anne
Hathaway and the kids, and if the Sonnets were an example of "write
about what you know," then Willie must've had a rollicking time in London.
God help the poor donkey JB if he taught now instead of 60 years ago.
Ironically he was married at the time to the late Eileen Simpson, who
became a practicing psychotherapist.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20021122/ai_n12660628/
Everything I recall about Berryman's presentations of sexuality suggest
he was punished by excessive remembrance and a conscience more Catholic
than the Pope's, even if he did his best to shove it under a rug finally
not big enough to contain it. For me the most devastating moment is not
the vision of Berryman vaulting over an imagined table to jump the bones
of the lady with the paprika chicken, but the finale:
> Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
> --Mr. Bones: there is.
The feeling is not uncommon among the fraction of the populace with
unfettered appetites and consciences made to match.
ken
--
Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/ http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
---------------------------------
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
|