John Berryman was perhaps the most idiosyncratic American poet of the
twentieth century. Best known for the painfully sad and raucously funny
cycle of Dream Songs, he wrote passionately: of love and despair, of
grief and laughter, of longing for a better world and coming to terms
with this one. The paperback edition of The Heart Is Strange has been
updated to include a selection from the Dream Songs alongside poems
from across his career.
The Heart Is Strange shows Berryman in all his variety: from his
earliest poems, which show him learning the craft, to his breakthrough
masterpiece, "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet"; then to his mature verses,
which find the poet looking back upon his lovers and youthful passions;
and finally to his late poems, in which he battles with sobriety and an
increasingly religious sensibility.
The defiant joy and wild genius of Berryman's work has been obscured by
his struggles with mental illness and alcohol, his tempestuous
relationships with women, and his suicide. This volume celebrates the
whole Berryman: tortured poet and teasing father, fiery lover and
melancholy scholar. It is a perfect introduction to one of the finest
bodies of work yet produced by an American poet.