I had been planning to look for John Berryman's grave while I was in Minnesota over the holidays. Resurrection Cemetery, in Mendota, just south of Twin Cities (across Minnesota River). Didn't get to it. Too durn cold. Maybe this summer, if I get out there.

I did visit (Frank Gehry-designed) little museum on U. of M. campus (Weisman Gallery) - just down River Road from parents' house. Big picture windows look out on Washington Ave. Bridge. The museum is located in a corner of riverbank where Berryman took his fatal leap.

Why this particular interest? Well, I feel personal connections. Have written about this before. (I guess he's part of this whole elegiac-homesick attitude I have about my home town - that's one aspect of it, anyway.)

& he's kind of a liminal-pivotal figure, between old & new. ie. the scholarly attitude (even though he failed at it much of the time). The Shakespeare studies, his devotion to Yeats, his old-time bardic-vocal manner. These are the "old". The new is - personal-confessional-anecdotal-slangy style. & how he grew out, or away from, some of the egotism of that (in an excruciating way) toward the end. A purgatorial path. Into the cold & snow. Sad but real. He carried a lot of psychological burdens - "inner demons", as they say.

("dream songs" - a phrase the Ojibwa used to describe their music.)

"Resurrection Cemetery" - a pretty good general description of human history & life on earth.