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September 6th, 2008 - we have 237 poets, 8036 poems and 17779 comments.
Books : The Dream Songs


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by: John Berryman

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811
EAN: 9780374530662
ISBN: 0374530661
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: April 17, 2007
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: April 17, 2007
Sales Rank: 105626
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux



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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
This edition combines The Dream Songs, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969 and contains all 385 songs. Of The Dream Songs, A. Alvarez wrote in The Observer, “A major achievement. He has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself.”




Customer Reviews
Average Rating:  out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - The Rest of the Story
The /mandatory/ companion to Berryman's /Collected Poems/, as Berryman isn't Berryman without the /Dream Songs/.
Always confessional, sometimes maudlin, never mawkish, always jerking language around to try to make it mean what he sees, the /Dream Songs/ are a brouhaha among his various selves, all passionate in their aspirations and their disagreements, an ongoing (1955-71) ruckus that made Berryman as he made them.
Warning: If you simply can't stand a ringside seat at a fight, don't; ... Read More



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Waving to the masses....
HAHA guys

What is this........... eh, not quite sure, but, slipped so easily into the unknown without PREJUDICE, completely into the author's syntax, thoughts and, yes, dreams.

This author waved to the onlookers as he descended to the hard, craggy Mississippi Rocks that he LOVED. Not a particular story many people in the press want to hold above THE LAUREATES and Fakes that permeate our Poetry industry. A truly strange trip through the head of an albatross in flight....
... Read More



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - dream songs aren't meant to be understood, understand?
the main point of criticism of this poem is its hyper-personal self-referential content. i have to say, however, that i have never felt so comforted, so saddened nor so delighted by any work of art or literature or film as i have by these songs no matter how little i know about what he really means or is talking about. i don't even want to know the specifics or the origins behind every line.
this is the most jarring and successful work of experimental anything i've ever encountered in my life. ... Read More



Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Loose Ballads
At first, I didn't find much to rejoice about in this collection of poems. The expectation Berryman sets up with his title is deceptive. I found little evidence of "dream." What I mean is that I found this writing highly literal, straight-forward and self-conscious, i.e. the antithesis of dreamy. Secondly, "songs" troubled me. One of the thing that distinguishes poetry from prose is poetry's musicality. And having "songs" in the title of a collection hints that there may be lyricism within. However, I ... Read More



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - To like without much understanding
I am not very knowledgable about Berryman and his work. I certainly have not read the poems with the time and intensity of a number of the reviewers on this site. I have an impression of Berryman and his work. It is of something vaguely likeable occaisionally able to provide a line which hits home. It is of a very variable voice in which the disorder and the breakdown somehow make the text too mixed- up.
Perhaps this is unfair. Bellow thought Berryman the best, and among other poets he too was understood ... Read More




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