Having enjoyed the Oklahoma-born and Ivy League-educated John Berryman's poems, and in particular his collection The Dream Songs, I have never paid much attention to his political views, whatever they may be. Indeed, even Berryman's harrowing auto-biographical novel, Recovery, is fairly devoid of any commentary that can be construed as politics. Hence I was surprised, and a little intrigued, to read in an article by Lewis Hyde, entitled 'Alcohol and Poetry', the following description of Berryman:
He had no politics except patriotism and nostalgia. He refused to read at the first antiwar readings in Minneapolis [he was a Professor at the University of Minnesota]. He wrote the only monarchist poem (Song 105) to come out of the sixties.
A curious, and somewhat surprising, description of Berryman's politics indeed and one which makes me recall, although I am not quite sure from where, the notion that the alcoholic is inherently conservative (socially, politically?).
Song 105
As a kid I believed in democracy: I
'saw no alternative'—teaching at The Big Place I ah
put it in practice:
we'd time for one long novel: to a vote—
Gone with the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No'
and we sat down with War & Peace.
As a man I believed in democracy (nobody
ever learns anything): only one lazy day
my assistant, called James Dow,
& I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds,
and I said curious 'What are your real politics?'
'Oh, I'm a monarchist.'
Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science.
I resign. The universal contempt for Mr Nixon,
whom never I liked but who
alert & gutsy served us years under a dope,
since dynasty K swarmed in. Let's have a King
maybe, before a few mindless votes.
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