Dream Song #14 (John Berryman)

What I know about John Berryman: He's from MN. If not actually born there, he is well associated with the state. He committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River. He wrote a series of "Dream Songs," this being #14. The Henry he mentions in the poem is in other Dream Songs as well. Henry is John Berryman, an alter-ego, if you will.

Knowing that, I think, is essential to the poem. I mean, he is bored even with himself. He is criticizing Henry as if he were a separate person. So, he distances himself from Henry. He distances himself from everything because there at the end it says that the only things remaining are "me, wag." The only things that remain are a stripped John Berryman and the afterimage of an inconsequential action. That is, at the end, the only things that are left don't mean very much at all, which is rather damning since he includes himself in that collection.

I think this poem is both tragic, as an insight into a depressed person's thoughts, and funny, as in the opening stanza's remembrances of the mother's warning/advice. And it is, perhaps, that I am reading this poem as more tragedy-filled than it wants. I mean, it is funny. But I can't help but insert the poet's personal history into this poem and hear depression despite the light-hearted tone.

Favorite line: "Life, friends, is boring."