The poetry of John Berryman was, in many ways, a response to a childhood tragedy. When John Berryman was twelve, his father shot himself dead.
Berryman was born in Oklahoma, US on October 25th, 1914. The young man graduated from Columbia University in 1936, after which he studied in Cambridge University for two years. ‘The Dispossessed’, published in 1948, was his first major collection of poetry. ‘Homage to Mistress Bradstreet’ was Berryman’s first poem to garner critical and public appreciation. John Berryman wrote some sonnets also.
Berryman’s masterpiece was ‘77 Dream Songs’. This great book of intensely personal poems was published in 1964. The book won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1965, as well as the National Book Award. ‘Love & Fame’ was another well known work.
Berryman was also famous for his confessional poetry. Berryman was one of the greatest American poets of the second half of the twentieth century.
John Berryman passed away on January 7th, 1972.