Cover of The Dream Songs

The Dream Songs

by John Berryman · 1969

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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."

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The Dream Songs are eighteen-line poems in three stanzas. Each individual poem is lyric and organized around an emotion provoked by an everyday event. The tone of the poems is less surreal than associational or intoxicated. The principal character of the song cycle is Henry, who is both the narrator of the poems and referred to by the narrator in the poems.

Genre
literary fictionliterary fictionMore like thisLess of thishumorhumorMore like thisLess of this
Themes
writerswritersMore like thisLess of thisidentityidentityMore like thisLess of this
Setting
1960s1960sMore like thisLess of thisUSAUSAMore like thisLess of this
Audience
adult
Length
long · 427 pages
Form
poetrypoetryMore like thisLess of this

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Liked The Dream Songs? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Dream Songs. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

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“People who read The Dream Songs tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror John Ashbery · 1975
  2. The Selected Levis Larry Levis · 2000
  3. The Sonnets Ted Berrigan · 1964
  4. The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara Frank O'Hara · 1971

“If you want more of the same (literary fiction about writers), start with these.”

  1. Live or Die Anne Sexton · 1966
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  4. All My Pretty Ones Anne Sexton · 1962

“If it was the poetry that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Complete Poems 1927-1979 Elizabeth Bishop · 1980
  2. 95 Poems E.E. Cummings · 1958
  3. Tulips & Chimneys E.E. Cummings · 1923
  4. Collected Poems Edna St. Vincent Millay · 1956

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Selected Poems, 1947–1995 Allen Ginsberg · 1996
  2. Edgar Allan Poe's Annotated Poems Edgar Allan Poe · 2008
  3. Free onlineFree Love Songs Sara Teasdale · 1917
  4. Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris Robert Darnton · 2000

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