John Allyn McAlpin Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr. ; October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in the " confessional " school of poetry. His 77 Dream Songs (1964) won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry .
60-533: John Berryman was born on October 25, 1914, in McAlester , Oklahoma , where he was raised until the age of ten, when his father, John Smith, a banker, and his mother, Martha (also known as Peggy), a schoolteacher, moved to Florida. In 1926, in Clearwater, Florida , when Berryman was 11 years old, his father shot and killed himself. Smith was jobless at the time, and he and Martha were filing for divorce. Berryman
120-477: A 2009 interview, Levine said Berryman took his class extremely seriously and that "he was entrancing ... magnetic and inspiring and very hard on [his students'] work ... [and] he was [also] the best teacher that I ever had". Berryman was fired from the University of Iowa after a fight with his landlord led to his being arrested, jailed overnight, and fined for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. His friend
180-727: A Choctaw family, who established a trading post. At one time Perryville was the capital of the Choctaw Nation and County Seat of Tobucksy County . During the American Civil War , the Choctaw allied with the Confederate States of America (CSA) as the war reached Indian Territory . A depot providing supplies to Confederate Forces in Indian Territory was set up at Perryville. On August 26, 1863,
240-673: A Florida dawn After his father's death at the rear entrance to Kipling Arms, where the Smiths rented an apartment, the poet's mother, within months, married John Angus McAlpin Berryman in New York City. The poet was renamed John Allyn McAlpin Berryman. Berryman's mother also changed her first name from Peggy to Jill. Although his stepfather later divorced his mother, Berryman and his stepfather stayed on good terms. With both his mother and stepfather working, his mother decided to send him to
300-629: A Kellett Fellowship from Columbia. He graduated in 1936. Berryman's early work formed part of a volume titled Five Young American Poets , published by New Directions in 1940. One of the other young poets included in the book was Randall Jarrell . Berryman published some of this early verse in his first book, Poems , in 1942. His first mature collection of poems, The Dispossessed , appeared six years later, published by William Sloane Associates. The book received largely negative reviews from poets like Jarrell, who wrote, in The Nation , that Berryman
360-538: A belief in a transcendent God ... to a belief in a God who cared for the individual fates of human beings and who even interceded for them." Nevertheless, Berryman continued to abuse alcohol and struggle with depression, as he had throughout much of his life, and on the morning of January 7, 1972, he killed himself by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis onto the west bank of
420-705: A branch of Eastern Oklahoma State College , is also in McAlester. McAlester is served by: McAlester Regional Airport (KMLC; FAA ID: MLC), approximately three miles southwest of town, features a paved 5602’ x 100’ runway. The airport had commercial air service through Central Airlines in the 1960s. The following sites in McAlester are listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma : Stephen Crane Too Many Requests If you report this error to
480-817: A character named Henry who bears a striking resemblance to Berryman, but Berryman was careful to make sure his readers realized that Henry was a fictional version of himself (or a literary alter ego ). In an interview, Berryman said, "Henry does resemble me, and I resemble Henry; but on the other hand I am not Henry. You know, I pay income tax; Henry pays no income tax. And bats come over and they stall in my hair — and fuck them, I'm not Henry; Henry doesn't have any bats." John Malcolm Brinnin , reviewing 77 Dream Songs in The New York Times , wrote that its "excellence calls for celebration". Robert Lowell wrote in The New York Review of Books , "At first
540-616: A force of 4,500 Union soldiers crossed the Canadian River and destroyed the Confederate munitions depot at Perryville. This became known as the Battle of Perryville , Indian Territory. Union Major General James G. Blunt , finding the Confederate supplies and realizing that Perryville was a major supply depot for Confederate forces, ordered the town burned. The town was rebuilt but never reached its prewar glory or population. After
600-484: A more suitable and profitable site for the trading post. He constructed a trading post/general store there in late 1869. The Bucklucksy general store was an immediate success, but McAlester recognized an even greater opportunity in the abundance of coal deposits in the area, so he began obtaining rights to the deposits from the Choctaws, anticipating the impending construction of a rail line through Indian Territory. As
660-542: Is 7b. As of the 2000 census , there were 17,783 people, 6,584 households , and 4,187 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,133.1 inhabitants per square mile (437.5/km ). There were 7,374 housing units at an average density of 469.9 per square mile (181.4/km ). The racial makeup of the city was 74.72% White , 8.68% African American , 10.48% Native American , 0.39% Asian , 0.05% Pacific Islander , 1.29% from other races , and 4.38% from two or more races . Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.04% of
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#1732782825691720-419: Is a little like eating a seven-course meal without a main course." Hirsch also wrote that, "[ Collected Poems features] a thorough nine-part introduction and a chronology as well as helpful appendixes that include Berryman's published prefaces, notes and dedications; a section of editor's notes, guidelines and procedures; and an account of the poems in their final stages of composition and publication." In 2004,
780-675: Is considered a minor work. Berryman taught or lectured at a number of universities, including the University of Iowa (at the Writer's Workshop ), Harvard University , Princeton University , the University of Cincinnati , and the University of Minnesota , where he spent most of his career, except for his sabbatical year in 1962–3, when he taught at Brown University . Some of his illustrious students included W. D. Snodgrass , William Dickey , Donald Justice , Philip Levine , Robert Dana , Jane Cooper , Donald Finkel , and Henri Coulette . In
840-410: Is its pungent and many-leveled portrait of a complex personality which, for all its eccentricity, stayed close to the center of the intellectual and emotional life of the mid-century and after." Citations McAlester, Oklahoma McAlester is the county seat of Pittsburg County , Oklahoma . The population was 18,363 at the time of the 2010 census, a 3.4 percent increase from 17,783 at
900-427: Is most in need of rediscovery, then these late poems are most in need of redemption." It's a good point. Although portions of Berryman's late work are sloppy and erratic, these poems help clarify the spiritual struggle that motivates and sustains his best writing. After surveying Berryman's career and accomplishments, the editors of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry wrote, "What seems likely to survive of his poetry
960-635: The Library of America published John Berryman: Selected Poems , edited by the poet Kevin Young . In Poetry magazine, David Orr wrote: Young includes all the Greatest Hits [from Berryman's career] ... but there are also substantial excerpts from Berryman's Sonnets (the peculiar book that appeared after The Dream Songs , but was written long before) and Berryman's later, overtly religious poetry. Young argues that "if his middle, elegiac period ...
1020-482: The Mississippi River . Berryman's poetry, which often revolves around the sordid details of his personal problems, is closely associated with the "confessional" poetry movement. In this sense, his poetry had much in common with the poetry of his friend Robert Lowell . The editors of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry note that "the influence of Yeats , Auden , Hopkins , Crane , and Pound on him
1080-611: The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad , familiarly called the Katy Railroad, began its corporate existence in 1865 toward that end. Morton and Parsons selected a site near the Kansas ;Indian Territory border where they incorporated the settlement of Parsons, Kansas in 1871. That same year, J. J. McAlester, after buying out Reynolds's share of the trading post, journeyed with a sample of coal to
1140-711: The South Kent School , a private boarding school in Connecticut. Berryman then attended Columbia College , where he was president of the Philolexian Society , joined the Boar's Head Society , edited The Columbia Review , and studied under the literary scholar and poet Mark Van Doren . Berryman later credited Van Doren with sparking his interest in writing poetry seriously. For two years, Berryman also studied overseas at Clare College, Cambridge , on
1200-568: The "dream song" poems at a feverish pace and in 1968 published a second, significantly longer, volume, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest , which won the National Book Award for Poetry and the Bollingen Prize . The next year Berryman republished 77 Dreams Songs and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest as one book, The Dream Songs , in which the character Henry serves as Berryman's alter ego. In Love & Fame (1970), he dropped
1260-515: The 1965 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and solidified Berryman's standing as one of the most important poets of the post-World War II generation that included Robert Lowell , Elizabeth Bishop , and Delmore Schwartz . Soon thereafter, the press began to give Berryman a great deal of attention, as did arts organizations and even the White House, which sent him an invitation to dine with President Lyndon B. Johnson (though Berryman declined because he
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#17327828256911320-546: The 2000 census. The town gets its name from James Jackson McAlester , an early settler and businessman who later became lieutenant governor of Oklahoma. Known as "J. J.", McAlester married Rebecca Burney, the daughter of a full-blood Chickasaw family, which made him a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. McAlester is the home of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary , the former site of an "inside
1380-644: The U.S. Government built the Naval Ammunition Plant a few miles south of McAlester. In 1977, the facility became the U.S. Army Ammunition Plant. It is still the main site of ammunition production and storage for the armed forces in the United States. Two Oklahoma Department of Corrections facilities, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and the Jackie Brannon Correctional Center, are in McAlester. McAlester
1440-425: The affair to his wife. He eventually published the work, Berryman's Sonnets , in 1967. It includes over one hundred sonnets. In 1950, Berryman published a biography of the fiction writer and poet Stephen Crane , whom he greatly admired. The book was followed by his next significant poem, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956), a conversation with the 17th-century poet Anne Bradstreet which featured illustrations by
1500-581: The artist Ben Shahn and was Berryman's first poem to receive "national attention" and a positive response from critics. Edmund Wilson wrote that it was "the most distinguished long poem by an American since T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land ." When Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and Other Poems was published in 1959, the poet Conrad Aiken praised the book's shorter poems, which he found superior to "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet". Despite his third book of verse's relative success, Berryman's great poetic breakthrough occurred with 77 Dream Songs (1964). It won
1560-529: The brain aches and freezes at so much darkness, disorder and oddness. After a while, the repeated situations and their racy jabber become more and more enjoyable, although even now I wouldn't trust myself to paraphrase accurately at least half the sections." In response to the perceived difficulty of the dream songs, in his 366th "Dream Song", Berryman facetiously wrote, "These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. / They are only meant to terrify & comfort". In His Toy, His Dream, His Rest , many of
1620-406: The city was $ 28,631, and the median income for a family was $ 36,480. Males had a median income of $ 29,502 versus $ 19,455 for females. The per capita income for the city was $ 16,694. About 16.1% of families and 19.4% of the population were below the poverty line , including 26.8% of those under age 18 and 11.6% of those age 65 or over. Agriculture and coal mining supported the city's economy around
1680-776: The city, leaving residents without power and water for more than a week. McAlester is at the intersection of U.S. Route 69 and U.S. Route 270 , in Pittsburg County . According to the United States Census Bureau , the city has a total area of 41 square miles (110 km ), of which 40.6 square miles (105 km ) is land. It has a humid subtropical climate ( Cfa ) and average monthly temperatures range from 40.0 °F (4.4 °C) in January to 81.7 °F (27.6 °C) in July. The hardiness zone
1740-416: The coal deposits from engineer Oliver Weldon, who served with McAlester during the war. Weldon had worked for the U.S. surveying Indian Territory before the war and knew of the coal deposits. Hearing of the railroad plans to extend through Indian Territory and knowing that rich deposits of coal were in an area north of the town of Perryville, McAlester convinced Reynolds and Hannaford that Bucklucksy would be
1800-407: The coal deposits in both the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations). McAlester quickly obtained land near the intersection of the north–south and east–west rail lines, where he opened a second general store and continued selling coal to the railroads. In 1885, Fritz Sittle (Sittel), a Choctaw citizen by marriage and one of the first settlers in the area, urged visiting newspaperman Edwin D. Chadick to pursue
1860-405: The coal mines. Miners of Italian origin arrived in McAlester in 1874. Chadick and his investors purchased land to the south of McAlester's General Store, and a natural trading crossroads formed where the two rail lines crossed, quickly becoming a bustling community called South McAlester. South McAlester grew much more rapidly than North McAlester. The 1900 census showed a population of 3,470 for
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1920-477: The coming of the railroad, businesses in nearby Perryville began relocating to be near the McAlester Rail Depot, marking the end of Perryville and the beginning of McAlester. On August 22, 1872, J. J. McAlester married Rebecca Burney (1841–1919). She was a member of the Chickasaw Nation, which made it possible for McAlester to gain citizenship and the right to own property (including mineral rights to
1980-438: The concentration of an extended lyric with the erudition and amplitude of a historical novel". Berryman's major poetic breakthrough came after the first volume of The Dream Songs , 77 Dream Songs , in 1964. The dream song form consists of short, 18-line lyric poems in three stanzas . They are in free verse, with some stanzas containing irregular rhyme. 77 Dream Songs (and its sequel His Toy, His Dream, His Rest ) centers on
2040-678: The dream songs are elegies for Berryman's recently deceased poet friends, including Delmore Schwartz , Randall Jarrell , and Theodore Roethke . The volume contains four times as many poems as the previous one, and covers more subject matter. For instance, in addition to the elegies, Berryman writes about his trip to Ireland, as well as his own burgeoning literary fame. Berryman's last two volumes of poetry, Love & Fame and Delusions, Etc. , featured free-verse poems that were much more straightforward and less idiosyncratic than The Dream Songs . Before Love & Fame 's publication, Berryman sent his manuscript to several peers for feedback, including
2100-648: The east–west California Road with the north–south Texas Road formed a natural point of settlement. At the time of its founding, the site was located in Tobucksy County , a part of the Moshulatubbee District of the Choctaw Nation . Alyssia Young, who emigrated from Mississippi to the Indian Territory, first established a settlement at the intersection of the two roads in 1838. The town was named Perryville after James Perry, member of
2160-529: The end of the Civil War in 1865, Captain J. J. McAlester obtained a job with the trading company of Reynolds and Hannaford. McAlester convinced the firm to locate a general store at Tupelo in the Choctaw Nation. He had learned of coal deposits in Indian Territory during the war while serving as a captain with the 22nd Arkansas Infantry Regiment (Confederate). At Fort Smith, Arkansas , before going to work with Reynolds and Hannaford, McAlester had received maps of
2220-520: The first railroad to extend its line to the northern border of Indian Territory, the Union Pacific Railway Southern Branch earned right of way and a liberal bonus of land to extend the line to Texas . Several New York businessmen, including Levi P. Morton , Levi Parsons , August Belmont , J. Pierpont Morgan , George Denison and John D. Rockefeller , were interested in extending rail through Indian Territory, and
2280-488: The former and 642 for the latter. The two towns operated as somewhat separate communities until 1907, when the United States Congress passed an act joining them as a single municipality, the action being required since the towns were under federal jurisdiction in Indian Territory. McAlester and South McAlester were combined under the single name McAlester, with South McAlester officeholders as officials of
2340-503: The mask of Henry to write more plainly about his life. Responses to the poems from critics and most of Berryman's peers ranged from tepid to hostile; the collection is now generally "considered a minor work". Henry reappeared in a couple of poems published in Delusions Etc. (1972), Berryman's last collection, which focused on his religious concerns and spiritual rebirth. The book was published posthumously and, like Love & Fame ,
2400-480: The memory of John Berryman". Berryman's Collected Poems--1937-1971 , edited and introduced by Charles Thornbury, was published in 1989. Robert Giroux decided to omit The Dream Songs from the collection. In his review of the Collected Poems , Edward Hirsch said of this decision, "It is obviously practical to continue to publish the 385 dream songs separately, but reading the Collected Poems without them
2460-731: The morning, rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window and did what was needed. I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong & so undone. I've always tried. I–I'm trying to forgive whose frantic passage, when he could not live an instant longer, in the summer dawn left Henry to live on. Similarly, in Dream Song #384, Berryman wrote: The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done, I stand above my father's grave with rage, often, often before I've made this awful pilgrimage to one who cannot visit me, who tore his page out: I come back for more, I spit upon this dreadful bankers grave who shot his heart out in
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2520-679: The nature of his spiritual rebirth in poems like "Eleven Addresses to the Lord" (which Lowell thought one of Berryman's best poems and "one of the great poems of the age") and "Certainty Before Lunch". In 1977 John Haffenden published Henry's Fate & Other Poems , a selection of dream songs that Berryman wrote after His Toy, His Dream, His Rest but did not publish. According to Time magazine's review, "Posthumous selections of unpublished poetry should be viewed suspiciously. The dead poet may have had good aesthetic reasons for keeping some of his work to himself. Fortunately, Henry's Fate does not malign
2580-501: The poem). Joel Athey noted, "This difficult poem, a tribute to the Puritan poet of colonial America , took Berryman five years to complete and demanded much from the reader when it first appeared with no notes. The Times Literary Supplement hailed it as a path-breaking masterpiece; poet Robert Fitzgerald called it 'the poem of his generation.'" Edward Hirsch observed that "the 57 stanzas of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet combine
2640-444: The poet Allen Tate helped him get the job at the University of Minnesota . Berryman was married three times. According to the editors of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry , he lived turbulently. During one of the many times he was hospitalized for alcohol abuse, in 1970, he experienced what he termed "a sort of religious conversion". According to his biographer Paul Mariani , Berryman experienced "a sudden and radical shift from
2700-522: The poets Adrienne Rich and Richard Wilbur , both of whom were disappointed with the poems, which they considered inferior to those of The Dream Songs . But some of Berryman's old friends and supporters, including Lowell, the novelist Saul Bellow , and the poet William Meredith , offered high praise for a number of the Love & Fame poems. Love & Fame and Delusions, Etc. were more openly "confessional" than Berryman's earlier verse, and also explored
2760-402: The population. There were 6,584 households, out of which 29.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.6% were married couples living together, 13.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.4% were non-families. 33.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older . The average household size
2820-462: The possibility of an east–west rail line to run through the coal mining district at Krebs that would connect with the north–south line at McAlester. Chadick eventually found financing and established the Choctaw Coal and Railway in 1888, but was unable to come to terms with J. J. McAlester over the issue of right of way . In the 1870s, miners from Pennsylvania arrived in McAlester to work in
2880-657: The railroad town in hopes of persuading officials to locate the line near his store at Bucklucksy. The trading post's location on the Texas Road weighed in its favor, given that the Katy line construction roughly followed the Shawnee Trail – Texas Road route south to the Red River . The line reached Bucklucksy in 1872, and Katy Railroad officials named the railway stop McAlester ( Nesbitt 1933 , pp. 760–61). With
2940-485: The single town. Designation as a single community by the United States Post Office came on July 1, 1907, nearly five months before Oklahoma statehood, which caused a redrawing of county lines and designations such that the majority of Tobucksy County fell within the new lines of Pittsburg County . The city had 8,144 inhabitants upon statehood, more than a fourth of whom were foreign-born. McAlester
3000-439: The turn of the 20th century. Cotton was the main cash crop, and McAlester had three cotton gins and one cotton compress. Then a boll weevil infestation destroyed local cotton production. Meanwhile, railroads converted from coal to oil as their primary fuel, which marked the decline of the coal industry in the area. The Oklahoma State Penitentiary is a major source of employment and revenue in McAlester. During World War II,
3060-645: The walls" prison rodeo that ESPN's SportsCenter once broadcast. The prison's nickname, Big Mac, was derived from its location in the town. McAlester is home to many of the employees of the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant . This facility makes the majority of the bombs used by the United States military. In 1998 McAlester became the home of the Defense Ammunition Center (DAC), which moved from Savanna, Illinois , to McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. The crossing of
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#17327828256913120-488: Was "a complicated, nervous, and intelligent [poet]" whose work was too derivative of W. B. Yeats . Berryman later concurred with this assessment of his early work, saying, "I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats." In October 1942, Berryman married Eileen Mulligan (later Simpson) in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral , with Van Doren as his best man. The couple moved to Beacon Hill , and Berryman lectured at Harvard. The marriage ended in 1953 (the divorce
3180-409: Was 2.31 and the average family size was 2.93. In the city, the population was spread out, with 22.2% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 30.4% from 25 to 44, 20.8% from 45 to 64, and 18.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 107.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 108.2 males. The median income for a household in
3240-1081: Was also previously home to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma in the Carl Albert Federal Building . Another non-profit called McAlester Main Street , one of the various national Main Street Programs , is a public-private partnership with the City of McAlester, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which works to preserve and revitalize Old Town and Downtown McAlester. McAlester Public Schools operates public schools. The McAlester Public Library
3300-510: Was built in 1970. As of 2010 the city has plans to build a new library. The Friends of the McAlester Public Library is financing the new branch. McAlester includes Kiamichi Technology Center , which has over 300 students per school year. There is also an extension of Eastern Oklahoma State College that partners with Southeastern Oklahoma State University and East Central University. The Wanda Bass Higher Education Center,
3360-501: Was formalized in 1956), when Simpson finally grew weary of Berryman's affairs and acting as "net-holder" during his self-destructive personal crises. Simpson memorialized her time with Berryman and his circle in her 1982 book Poets in Their Youth . In 1947, Berryman started an affair with a married woman named Chris Haynes, documented in a long sonnet sequence that he refrained from publishing in part because that would have revealed
3420-480: Was haunted by his father's death for the rest of his life and wrote about his struggle to come to terms with it in much of his poetry. In "Dream Song #143", he wrote, "That mad drive [to commit suicide] wiped out my childhood. I put him down/while all the same on forty years I love him/stashed in Oklahoma/besides his brother Will". In "Dream Song #145", he also wrote of his father: he only, very early in
3480-601: Was in Ireland at the time). Berryman was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967, and that same year Life magazine ran a feature story on him. Also that year the newly created National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a $ 10,000 grant (when a Minneapolis reporter asked him about the award, he said that he had never heard of NEA before receiving it). Berryman also continued to work on
3540-548: Was on the route of the Jefferson Highway established in 1915, with that road running more than 2,300 miles from Winnipeg, Manitoba to New Orleans, Louisiana. McAlester was the site of the 2004 trial of Terry Nichols on Oklahoma state charges related to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing . On December 25, 2000, an ice storm hit the area, leaving residents without electrical service and water for more than two weeks; in January 2007, another devastating ice storm crippled
3600-506: Was strong, and Berryman's own voice—by turns nerve-racked and sportive—took some time to be heard." Berryman's first major work, in which he began to develop his own style, was Homage to Mistress Bradstreet . In the long, title poem, which first appeared in Partisan Review in 1953, Berryman addresses the 17th-century American poet Anne Bradstreet , combining her life history with his fantasies about her (and inserting himself into
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