"Staggering, swaggering, intoxicating": John Berryman achieved a poetry
where (in the words of editor Kevin Young) "Protagonists search for a lover
or friend, ancestor or listener, with a recklessness that only Whitman
allowed himself. . . . Berryman becomes Everyman attempting, falling short
of, and often achieving greatness." Young's selection, the first new
selection of Berryman's poems in over 30 years, encompasses the formal
accomplishments of his early work, epitomized in the masterful Homage to
Mistress Bradstreet, the explosive and mesmerizing diction of Dream Songs,
and his wrenching religious poems. Kevin Young's poetry and essays have
appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review,
and elsewhere, and have been featured on NPR's "All Things Considered."