Only Sing

This brilliant collection of previously unpublished poems from Berryman’s Dream Songs cycle is proof, as Shane McCrae writes in the introduction, that he “understood his epic to be complete, but he did not believe that its completeness could have only one form.” For McCrae, Henry—Berryman’s alter-ego in the Songs—“is a hero for a disenchanted nation, from which once-common beliefs have mostly fled.” It’s extraordinary to reencounter that voice—at once comic, tragic, and heartbreaking—across the span of these poems, many of which achieve the heights of those that established Berryman’s stellar reputation. The entries exhibit the familiar lurch from high to low and disordered and disjointed syntax. Among the finest are elegies for other poets, such as Louis MacNeice and Delmore Schwartz, which affectingly turn toward melancholy, “Over the dark miles I seize in my hand/ his, and with him I hope she slept/ the grimy night gone by,” or woundable romanticism, “where once we risked the rest of it on love/ where once somewhat now we grow bewildered & hardened—but not good enough.” Courtly, profound, and irresistible, this is a gift for readers already tuned into Huffy Henry and those new to Berryman’s essential American songbook. (Dec.)