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77 Dream Songs
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Check link for latest rating. ( 1,205 ratings, 116 reviews)
Brief Description
This edition of 77 Dream Songs faithfully replicates the iconic jacket, format, and setting of the first edition, published in 1964. The poem then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white American...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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'The poem then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white American in early middle age sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second;
This edition of 77 Dream Songs faithfully replicates the iconic jacket, format and setting of the first edition, published in 1964.
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Description
This edition of 77 Dream Songs faithfully replicates the iconic jacket, format, and setting of the first edition, published in 1964.
The poem then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white American in early middle age sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second; he has a friend, never named, who addresses him as Mr Bones and variants thereof. Resquiescant in pace. βJohn Berryman
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law
Against Henry.
-Mr Bones: there is.
(Dream Song 4)
All is risk and variety here. This great Pierrot's universe is more tearful and funny than we can easily bear... No voice now or persona sticks in my ear as his. It is poignant, abrasive, anguished, humorous... βRobert Lowell
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780571400225
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 13 August 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Edition: Main
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 204.0mm
Weight: 300g
Pages: 96
Collections
About the Author
John Berryman (1914-72) was a poet from an immensely gifted generation of American poets that included Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell and Elizabeth Bishop. His long sequence The Dream Songs (of which 77 Dream Songs was the first part) has become an enduring landmark in American poetry and a tribute to Berryman's own endurance in the face of alcoholism, depression and mental instability. In 1972 he leaped to his death from a bridge above the Mississippi River.
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