John Berryman

Drawing on the proceedings of two conferences organized to celebrate the centenary of John Berryman's birth in 2014, John Berryman: Centenary Essays provides new perspectives on a major US American poet's work by critics from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. In addition to new readings of important aspects of Berryman's development - including his creative and scholarly encounters with Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and W. B. Yeats - the book gives fresh accounts of his engagements with contemporaries such as Delmore Schwartz and Randall Jarrell. It also includes essays that explore Berryman's poetic responses to Mozart and his influence on the contemporary Irish poet Paul Muldoon. Making extensive use of unpublished archival sources, personal reflections by friends and former students of the poet are accompanied by meditations on Berryman's importance for writers today by award-winning poets Paula Meehan and Henri Cole. Encompassing a wide range of scholarly perspectives and introducing several emerging voices in the field of Berryman studies, this volume affirms a major poet's significance and points to new directions for critical study and creative engagement with his work.

Philip Coleman is an Associate Professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, where he is also a Fellow. His most recent publications include John Berryman's Public Vision: Relocating «The Scene of Disorder» and Berryman's Fate: A Centenary Celebration in Verse (2014). He also co-edited «After thirty Falls»: New Essays on John Berryman (2007). With Calista McRae, he is currently co-editing a selection of John Berryman's literary correspondence. Peter Campion is the author of three collections of poems, Other People, The Lions and El Dorado, as well as numerous catalogue essays and art monographs on contemporary painters. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize (Prix de Rome) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he directs the MFA programme in creative writing at the University of Minnesota.

Contents: Paula Meehan: Foreword: «Berrymancy» - Philip Coleman/Peter Campion: Introduction - Judith Koll Healey/Richard J. Kelly/Bob Lundegaard: Berryman as Teacher and Friend: Personal Reminiscences - Michael Berryhill: Henry and His Problems - Claudio Sansone: John Berryman's «Poundian Inheritance» and the Epic of «Synchrisis» - Edward Clarke: Berryman's Mischief - Karl O'Hanlon: «A fresh, active relation»: Milton's Lycidas and the Poetry of John Berryman - Deanna Wendel: Multiple Impersonalities: T. S. Eliot and John Berryman - Heather Treseler: Of Letters and Lyric Style: John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet - J. T. Welsch: «Satanic pride»: Berryman, Schwartz, and the Genesis of Love & Fame - Alex Runchman: «the angel and the beast in man»: John Berryman, Delmore Schwartz, and Shakespeare - Michael Hinds: Berryman-Jarrell: Nervous Affinities - Katherine Ebury: «The sonnet might »: John Berryman and Paul Muldoon as Sonneteers - Stephen Matterson: Not Allowed to be Bored: John Berryman's Lexicon of Boredom - Adam Beardsworth: The Pornography of Grief: John Berryman and the Language of Suffering - Eve Cobain: «He begot us an enigma»: Berryman's Beethoven - Peter Campion: John Berryman's Acoustics - Michael P. Carriger/William C. Patterson: Henry in High School: John Berryman in the Classroom is an «Angry Zen Touch» - Henri Cole: Afterword: My John Berryman; or, Imagination, Love, Intellect, and Pain.