Carol Frost: John Berryman at Thirty-Six (January 1993)

In this lecture, Carol Frost examines Berryman’s critical thinking and poems in the period of time just before he wrote “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet” and The Dream Songs. Tracing Berryman’s frustration with his early poetry, and the ways in which he looked toward English poets to find discipline and tradition, Frost draws on Berryman’s letters, essays, journal entries and poems to offer this consideration of the development of the poet’s aesthetic.