Two Americas and a Scotland

Nicholas Everett

• Collected Poems, 1937-1971 by John Berryman, edited by Charles Thornbury
  Faber, 348 pp, £17.50, February 1990, ISBN 0 571 14317 2
• The Dream Songs by John Berryman
  Faber, 427 pp, £17.50, February 1990, ISBN 0 571 14318 0
• Poems 1959-1979 by Frederick Seidel
  Knopf, 112 pp, $19.95, November 1989, ISBN 0 394 58021 4
• These Days by Frederick Seidel
  Knopf, 50 pp, $18.95, October 1989, ISBN 0 394 58022 2
• A Scottish Assembly by Robert Crawford
  Chatto, 64 pp, £5.99, April 1990, ISBN 0 7011 3595 6

Whether in person or in print, self-consciousness is unsettling. Self-conscious writers, like self-conscious speakers, can’t help betraying that they’re more concerned with their interest in a subject, and the manner which conveys that interest, than in the subject itself. A poet’s earliest efforts are usually marred by self-consciousness and John Berryman’s are no exception to the rule. For most poets, however, finding a distinct and convincing voice is, at least in part, a process of shedding unwanted affectations and exaggerated self-importance. For Berryman the process was reversed. He learnt to capitalise on his self-consciousness, to seem to intend it. His detractors claim that all his work is mannered and self-indulgent, and they’re right: but the best of it – a couple of ‘The Nervous Songs’, some of the sonnets, most of The Dream Songs – opens up a saving gap between a displayed self-consciousness and the poet who lurks behind it.

Vol. 12 No. 18 · 27 September 1990 » Nicholas Everett » Two Americas and a Scotland (print version)
Pages 22-23 | 3916 words