Published in October by Harvard University Press, this new edited collection by Professor Coleman and Dr Calista McRae (New Jersey Institute of Technology) is a “first-of-its-kind” look into the lifetime correspondence of the much-celebrated American poet.
The opening line of the introduction to the book carries a quote from Berryman from an unpublished essay written at Columbia College in 1934 when he reflected, “I think that in letters, as in no other form of writing, the man appears.”
A small number of Berryman’s letters have appeared before in biographies of the poet, but “this book represents the first wide-ranging selection from Berryman’s correspondence. There are letters here to almost two hundred people, including editors, fellowship committees, family members, academic colleagues, and students who would themselves become well-known writers…”
I think that in letters, as in no other form of writing, the man appears.
Associate Professor Philip Coleman is also the author of John Berryman’s Public Vision and a number of edited collections of essays about the American poet. This edition of the letters of John Berryman is the culmination of Dr Coleman’s work on the poet, a special research interest he has had since the 1990s.
The Selected Letters of John Berryman has received celebrated coverage in a number of prominent newspapers and magazines including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Writing in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane writes that “in an existence littered with loss” the poet’s “star has waned” somewhat in recent years. However, he argues that “anyone who delights in listening to Berryman, and who can’t help wondering how the singer becomes the songs, will find much to treasure here, in these garrulous and pedantic pages.”Read the full review here.
In The Washington Post, poet, critic and philosopher Troy Jollimore writes that the book “chronicles that cycle of breakdown and recovery, expectation and disappointment, through more than 600 pages of correspondence”, noting not least, the suicide of Berryman’s father in 1926. “Happiness was as transformative for Berryman as suffering, and his accounts of ecstasy and contentment are as wonderful as his depictions of anxiety and despair are piercing.” “This is a long book that I wish had been longer”, Jollimore notes, “on turning the last page, I was eager buy a second collection. The voice of these letters is recognizably the voice of much of Berryman’s poetry.”Link to review.
Acknowledging the reception of the book, Dr Coleman commented: “It is wonderful to see a work of scholarship like this so widely, and warmly, reviewed. Based on work conducted in dozens of literary archives on both sides of the Atlantic – including Trinity’s College Library – it shows that primary literary research and scholarship can have a real and meaningful impact on many different kinds of readers. The book illuminates many aspects of an important poet’s life and work, but it will also inspire new readings of his poetry by younger scholars into the future.”
Further reviews are included here: