John Berryman QUOTES

1 " I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut. "

2 " You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest. "

― John Berryman

3 " These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.
They are only meant to terrify & comfort. "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

4 " I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing. "

― John Berryman

5 " Them lady poets must not marry, pal. "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

6 " Them lady poets must not marry, pal . . . It is a true error to marry with poets / or to be by them. "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

7 " During those years he met his seminars,
went & lectured & read, talked with human beings,
paid insurance & taxes;
but his mind was not on it. his mind was elsewheres
in an area where the soul not talks but sings
& where foes are attacked with axes. "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

8 " Is stuffed, de world, wif feeding girls. "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

9 " The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man

Amid the doctors in the Temple at twelve, between mother & host at Cana implored too soon, in the middle of disciples, the midst of the mob, between High-Priest and Procurator, among the occupiers,
between the malefactors, and 'stetit in medio, et dixit, pax vobis' and 'ascensit ad mediam Personarum et caelorum,' dear my Lord,mercy a sinner nailed dead-centre too, pray not to late,-
for also Ezra stood between the seven & the six, restoring the new Law. "

― John Berryman , Delusions, Etc.

10 " I ask for a decree
dooming my bitter enemies to laughter
advanced against them. "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

11 " …Henry is tired of winter,
& haircuts, & a squeamish comfy ruin-prone proud national
mind, & Spring (in the city so called)
Henry likes Fall.
Hé would be prepared to líve in a world of Fáll
for ever, impenitent Henry.
But the snows and summers grieve and dream;

These fierce & airy occupations, and love,
raved away so many of Henry’s years
it is a wonder that, with in each hand
one of his own mad books and all,
ancient fires for eyes, his head full
& his heart full, he's making ready to move on. "

― John Berryman , 77 Dream Songs

12 " We must travel in the direction of our fear. "

― John Berryman

13 " Yeats knew nothing about life: it was all symbols
& Wordsworthian egotism: Yeats on Cemetery Ridge
would not have been scared, like you & me,
he would have been, before the bullet that was his,
studying the movements of the birds,
said disappointed & amazed Henry. "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

14 " My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist. "

― John Berryman , 77 Dream Songs

15 " Heartmating hesitating unafraid "

― John Berryman , The Dispossessed

16 " Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn "

― John Berryman , The Dream Songs

17 " We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place. "

― John Berryman

18 " One must be ruthless with one’s own writing or someone else will be. "

― John Berryman

19 " There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still). "

― John Berryman , Recovery

20 " The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business. "

― John Berryman

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