10.21.2008

Re-reading memoir by Eileen Simpson, Poets in their Youth - her life with onetime husband John Berryman, experiences with other poets, novelists & critics (Lowell, Jean Stafford, Schwartz, Blackmur, many others). Got me going back to Berryman's reviews & essays.

Want to read further & more diligently... feel the need to re-think, re-experience the whole background & history. Berryman's omnibus review from 1948, "Waiting for the end, boys", is fascinating. Lowell & Berryman had worked so hard to master the tradition, the past poetries (as they knew them). They had so much poetry, by so many poets, memorized. Berryman's review very acute, very witty.

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