Re: so what books are you currently reading?

In addition to reading my students for 2 more weeks, I've been
finding great comfort ("Tears behind the eyes/almost fall") in The
Dream Songs by John Berryman. He wrote 385 poems, each one with 3
stanzas of 6 lines each. I don't know if Berryman will survive as
great or even well-known poet of the 20th Century, but his poetry is
well-crafted and his voice cuts to the bone while seeming simple and
almost distracted. I think it's the sounds his words make that really
get to me...here's the last poem in the book...I read this one often
through a tough last week and it will haunt me for the rest of my
life.

  will

                                                                385

My daughter's heavier. Light leaves are flying.
Everywhere in enormous numbers turkeys will be dying
And other birds, all their wings.
They never greatly flew. Did they wish too?
I should know. Off away somewhere once I knew
such things.

Or good Ralph Hodgson back then did, or does.
The man is dead whom Eliot praised. My praise
follows and flows too late.
Fall is grievy, brisk. Tears behind the eyes
almost fall. Fall comes to us as a prize
to rouse us toward our fate.

My house is made of wood and it's made well,
unlike us. My house is older than Henry;
that's fairly old.
If there were a middle ground between things and the soul
or if the sky resembled more the sea,
I wouldn't have to scold
                                                        my heavy daughter.

*****

-- 
	Will Hochman
Associate Professor of English
Southern Connecticut State University
501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515
203 392 5024
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/willz.html
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