Mark Kerstetter, Like the sunburst up the white breast of a black-footed penguin, ink, watercolor, pencil and collage
I have told how as a teenager I kept a copy of The Dream Songs on my drawing board as I painted animals for the family business, often stopping to read a few, marking my favorites, puzzling over, frankly, most of them. At the time I considered myself a visual artist. I wrote terrible poetry, and did not consider myself a writer at all. Poetry was a vast mystery to me. How I came to acquire a copy of the book is not an interesting story. But of endless interest to me is that I had one of the few epiphanies of my life while reading Song 305.
The first line of the poem, “Like the sunburst up the white breast of a black-footed penguin”, made me see, for the first time, what poetry was. No doubt because I was a visual artist whose first love was music, I saw the image described in the line, and then I heard the language in how it was worded. The two were wedded. And I was off. No turning back. My first poetic love after that was ee Cummings, because of the visual and sound play in his work, but my infatuation with Cummings was short-lived, while my love of Berryman has remained strong.
Mark Kerstetter, Henry, monstrous bug, charcoal, ink and collage
We learned in looking at Song 25 that Berryman felt the writing of the Songs at times a burden that he had imposed on himself and yet could not lay down. Part of the burden, perhaps the most terrible part, was that even as he felt “his gift recede”, as the first line of Song 310 informs us, he couldn’t see what to live for without the poetry. And so in the third stanza Henry in a mashup of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa and the condemned man of “In the Penal Colony” lies down as a “monstrous bug… on the machine in the penal colony without a single regret.” The last three lines are almost too terrible to read—and to those who would argue Berryman’s poetry is too nefarious to be read with impunity, I would reply the same logic must be applied to Kafka.
But what, may we ask, is the sentence to be inscribed on Henry’s flesh? Berryman doesn’t say. But I have lain Henry down on the bed of his own making (readers always judge): a grid composed from the Indexes of first lines and titles of the Songs. With every word we read by or about Berryman, we know that linguistic acts of all kinds but especially endless poetic performance were what he lived for. More than that, he lived his life through language. And that was his tragedy. One gets the impression from the biography that time after time in his life Berryman approached people and situations with a mind to turning it all into literature, and that he saw the ultimate value of his own life as literature; one can even make the argument that suicide was his last literary act. He clutched romantic notions to his breast about the necessity of suffering for the production of great art, forever levering himself on the perch of the Great Suffering Bard. Even a bout of diarrhea was a spur to poetic triumph (Song 134). But past the Shinola and through the shit, he was the real deal, turning the dross of his soul into poetic gold through extraordinary efforts, a superlative example of the elevation of voice to a high level of poetic utterance precisely because the coordinates of his poetic practice were so extreme, all the while never seeming to care that he was killing himself in the name of art, and never seeming to understand that life will bring suffering without any prompting from the poet. But Berryman could not find a path to a voice by meeting what life brings and drawing it back out of himself. No, he had to embark on the impossible quest of besting life by becoming the Chichester of pain, setting sail to its sharpest and hottest points. Only a fool would follow him. But then only a fool thinks they can achieve a voice by trying to wear someone else’s vocal cords.
Mark Kerstetter, A tiger watches from a vector, ink, watercolor pencil, charcoal and collage
I’m afraid this isn’t a very good strategy. I succumbed once again to an infatuation, this time the face of a tiger. To compensate here is a reading (it’s one of my favorite Songs) and a few musings.
Commentators on The Dream Songs often state that some of them are inscrutable, even if the language is compelling. I too have found this to be true. But sometimes what appears puzzling becomes clearer with repeated readings and reflection. Song 55 made no sense to me for the longest time. Henry’s at the Pearly Gates and “Peter’s not friendly”, the interview turns sour, and the last three lines:
I feel my applicationfailing. It’s growing dark,
some other sound is overcoming. His last words are:
‘We betrayed me.’
I never understood that. Why is it growing dark in Purgatory? What is that “other sound”? And the last line? We betrayed me? Well, OK, if he feels his application failing, then the light of Heaven could be dimming for him, and that other sound could be the onrush of a lake of fire. Now we’re stuck face to face with St.Peter, and we must admit that this is a cartoon. In Christian doctrine Peter has nothing to do with a single soul’s entry into Heaven. What’s he doing there, still stewing on his infamous betrayal? How many tears must he weep? It must mean this: we all fall short, even the rock. We fail ourselves, and in failing ourselves we fail one another. Peter’s sideways looks at Henry can only mean: I know you, Pal, like I know myself; join the line.
I was drawn to Song 247, came to love its language and even considered it a quintessential Song—all before I understood it. But after repeated readings confusion gave way to amazement that I missed the obvious and then maybe just a bit of sheepishness while doing the reading—that bit about the lady seen not met running Henry like the crew and captain is an embarrassing thing for a man. But then Henry was a shameless fool; just take a look at Song 4. The Dream Songs are like songs that are so surprising and novel that it takes awhile to get past our astonishment to a clear formulation of what the song means to us. All we know is we like the music. I read something in one of Berryman’s letters that put me in mind of the lines
and chance is King, a jacket lined with fur
for June, while viruses in the back seat clamour
In the letter Berryman is in a pleasant place but he’s all alone and he’s very ill, as he often was. He writes, “It’s like being in Paradise, with Anthrax.”
Mark Kerstetter, A swivelly grace, watercolor pencil, charcoal and collage
The judge in this Song refers to the one who performed Berryman’s wedding ceremony, and this Song is almost too painfully bittersweet to read. Berryman was so sick at the ceremony, and his hand shook so much while trying to sign his name that the clerk made him practice his signature. The singer lifts a heavy head toward a note of hope, but this is an inauspicious beginning. My reading of this swings on the word “swivel”—that “swivelly grace” and that “swivelled us a judge”. A gavel hangs over this Song like the Sword of Damocles: will it land on darkness or light?
The poem “Antitheses”, from the collection Love & Fame, one of my favorites of the later poems, also swings on the word, “swivel” and, interestingly, it also refers to his wife. It’s a poem about poets: who are they, what are they, what good are they? Don’t ask me, he seems to say, citing his street address as the space where the writing is done. And the last stanza deadpans like that “wag” in what seems to be the most popular of the Dream Songs, Song 14. At that address, in that room where the writing is done,
My rocking-chair is dark blue, it’s in one corner
& swivels, as my thought drifts.
My wife’s more expensive patchquilt rocker
is five feet away & does not swivel.
Mark Kerstetter, Thought fled into the jungle, colored pencil, ink and collage
This is one of my favorites because (more than many of the others) it deserves to be called a reading strategy. With a minimum of elements—cut and rearranged text, drawn lines, and color—it is intended to be read, emphasizing in a new way the shape and thrust of the Song. The hinge for where this Song comes from and where it’s going resides in the lines:
thought fled: into the jungle. It was that simple.
Long after, spread the treatises.
The Mockingbird Sings 