again your resignation from us now
though the screams of orphaned children fix me
anew.
Your torment here was brief,
long falls your exit all repeatingly,
a poor exemplum, one more suicide
to stack upon the others
till stricken Henry with his sisters & brothers
suddenly gone pauses to wonder why he
alone breasts the wronging tide.
This poem was chosen because it deals with Berryman's preoccupations with poetry and survival, although it lacks his characteristic humor.
The finest of these poems about poets are the elegies for Delmore Schwartz, "Ten Songs, one solid block of agony," (157) which are among the finest elegies in the language:
... flame may his glory in that other place,
for he was fond of fame, devoted to it,
and every first-rate soul
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Advocates Taping
