Sonnet 4 - Ah when you drift hover - Berryman

As mentioned in earlier post, John Berryman's (1914 - 1972) 115 sonnets were an accounting of the course of a love affair with a married woman.  By this one's number, it's at the beginning. 

It's not an "easy" poem after the first four lines.... but what first four lines they are!  They alone are worth it.  Who hasn't felt so enraptured, connected and complete that nothing else that moment matters - not life, not wondering "...the point of life..."!  Those lines are the gold-standard for describing the drug-like "high" of kissing a lover.  (There.  Now I've made you, dear reader - AND myself! - entirely self-conscious about the next time we kiss.   Yes, even each other!)  

The rest of the sonnet requires a bit more "work" for full appreciation, particularly with the classical references.  (I wrestled with whether to post this poem at all because of that.)  

However, as quick help, "swine-enchanted lover" is a reference to the Odyssey and Circe, the enchantress who turned Odysseus' crew into animals, notably pigs.  (Hmm.... is this where it comes from that women call men "pigs"?)  "Melpomene" was one of  the 9 Muses, the goddesses of dance, music, and song, in Greek mythology.  Each "covered" one area in the arts, and Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy.  "Erato", on the other hand, was the Muse of erotic poetry....so we know where Berryman was headed (if not already there).  He was a lustful, lively - and tormented - man who, like his father, eventually committed suicide (click on his name above for a link to a brief bio).  It's good to have in this poem - and many others - a record of his joy.
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Sonnet 4 – Ah when you drift hover

Ah when you drift hover before you kiss

More your mouth yours now, lips grow more to mine

Teeth click, suddenly your tongue like a mulled wine

Slides fire, -- I wonder what the point of life is.

Do, down this night when I adore you, Lise,

So I forsake the blest assistant shine

Of deep-laid maps I made for summits, swine-

enchanted lover, loafing in the abyss?

Loaf hardly, while my nerves dance, while the gale

Moans like your hair down here.  But I lie still.

Strengthless and smiling under a maenad rule.

Whose limbs worked once, whose imagination’s grail

Many or some would nourish, must now I fill

My strength with desire, my cup with your tongue,

          no more Melpomene’s but Erato’s fool?...

                                                      John Berryman

Sonnet 36 – (Keep your eyes open when you kiss) - John Berryman

 Another selection from John Berryman's sonnets has been long overdue.  For some background, the 115 poems, written in the 1940s and in one volume, were a lineal account of a love affair and not published until the mid-1960s.  To me, they are on a par with Neruda's, sharing a richness and passion of expression that is dizzying.  Both are to be read aloud and large, be it in front of the loved one as declarations or alone, as lamentations.  Either way, they are bold and cathartic, with wine or whiskey, day or night.  Sometimes, the syntax in Berryman can sound "Yoda-ish" by its placement of nouns and verbs, and it takes a little bit of effort to "get" all he is doing with language.  But the prize.... the prize when you do is so satisfying that you'll be ashamed of having complained.  Here, in this early one in the arc of the relationship, he turns the traditional "close your eyes when kissing" on its head and riffs on it.... while sticking to the sonnet structure. Wow!

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 Sonnet  36 – (Keep your eyes open when you kiss) – John Berryman

Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when

You kiss.  All silly time else, close them to;

Unsleeping, I implore you (dear) pursue

In darkness me, as I do you again

Instantly we part . . only me both then

And when your fingers fall, let there be two

Only, “in that dream-kingdom”: I would have you

Me alone recognize your citizen.

Before who wanted eyes, making love, so?

I do now.  However we are driven and hide,

What state we keep all other states condemn,

We see ourselves, we watch the solemn glow

Of empty courts we kiss in . . Open wide

You do, you do, and I look into them.

                                                      John Berryman

Sonnet 60 - John Berryman

 Another sonnet by John Berryman.  (Be sure to read any and all that are - or will be - in this blog.  You must.  You will thank me, but you don't have to.) Missing out on Berryman is missing out on what can be the result when a person of his complexity and command of language focuses on Love.  

As for this one.... in whatever continent's city I've waited for a subway train, this is the poem that comes to life just before that train arrives.  It will happen to you, too, after you read the second strophe.  You'll think of this poem the next time you anticipate meeting someone you hope is "the one"..... And if you have found "the one" already, all the more reason to feel like this every time you are apart and reuniting.....  (Speaking of subways,  my iPhone app of the Paris Metro just flashed a message that service on "Ligne 1", the one that runs east-west and stops at the Louvre, is "pertubé" - "perturbed", by which they mean it has a problem.  How apropos of poetry to think of a train as "perturbed"...)
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Sonnet 60

Today is it?  Is it today?  I shudder

For nothing in my chair, and suddenly yawn.

Today I suddenly believe.  Since dawn

When I got up, my muscles like a rudder

strain crosswise from this work.  I rise and mutter

Something, and hum, pace, and sit down again

Hard.  A butterfly in my shoulder then

Stops and aches.  My stomach swings like a shutter.

As the undergrounds piston a force of air

Before their crash into the station, you

Are felt before your coming, and the platforms shake.

So light, so small, so far still, to impair

Action and peace so….risks we take make true

Maybe our safeties….come for our risk’s sake.

                                                                                    John Berryman - American

Sonnet 23 - J. Berryman

John Berryman  (1914- 1972)....  His poetry is brilliant wild and he himself a big - and tragic figure in American poetry: another of the "founders" of the Confessional style that committed suicide.  I was in college when that happened, vaguely remember reading about it, but didn't know his poetry well-enough then to be affected.  This one is one of my all-time favorites, a declaration of love that IS "..fresh as  a bubble breaks..".  Goes well with a big Burgundy, an aged Gouda perhaps, and someone who expected the usual.....  Some of Berryman's poems are dazzling but require effort, as your brain will have to make new synapses for his imagery.  (Don't start with the "Dream Songs"!)  You must read this one aloud and with passion!
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Sonnet 23


They may suppose, because I would not cloy your ear - 
If ever these songs by other ears are heard - 
With ‘love’ and ‘love', I loved you not, but blurred 
Lust with strange images, warm, not quite sincere,

To switch a bedroom black.  O mutineer 
With me against these empty captains!  Gird
Your scorn against above all this word
Pompous and vague on the stump of his career.

Also I fox ‘heart’, striking a modern breast
Hollow as a drum, and ‘beauty’ I taboo;
I want a verse fresh as a bubble breaks,
As little false... Blood of my sweet unrest
Runs all the same - I am in love with you -
Trapped in my rib-cage something throes and aches!
                                                                                              

John Berryman - American