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Only Sing: 152 Uncollected Dream Songs
The never-before-published poems of one of the greatest American poets, John Berryman.
John Berryman’s Dream Songs are arguably the funniest, saddest, most intricately wrought cycle of poems by an American in the twentieth century. They are also, more simply, the vibrantly sketched adventures of a uniquely American antihero named Henry. Henry falls in and out of love, and is in and out of the hospital; he sings of joy and desire, and of being at odds with the world. He is lustful; he is depressed.
The collected Dream Songs consists of 385 discrete poems, combining those from 77 Dream Songs, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and those from His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969. But for Berryman, Henry lived on. Over the years, the poet wrote more than a hundred additional songs that didn’t make it into the various published editions of the songs. As elucidated by Shane McCrae in the introduction to this edition, Berryman hoped that readers might slot these unpublished poems in among the rest.
Only Sing, which includes both finished poems and drafts, isn’t merely the scraps left on a cutting room floor; it is a continuation of the epic cycle, an additional set of poems that crack language open, an extension of Berryman’s brilliant account of madness shot through with searing insight.
John Berryman’s Dream Songs are arguably the funniest, saddest, most intricately wrought cycle of poems by an American in the twentieth century. They are also, more simply, the vibrantly sketched adventures of a uniquely American antihero named Henry. Henry falls in and out of love, and is in and out of the hospital; he sings of joy and desire, and of being at odds with the world. He is lustful; he is depressed.
The collected Dream Songs consists of 385 discrete poems, combining those from 77 Dream Songs, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and those from His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969. But for Berryman, Henry lived on. Over the years, the poet wrote more than a hundred additional songs that didn’t make it into the various published editions of the songs. As elucidated by Shane McCrae in the introduction to this edition, Berryman hoped that readers might slot these unpublished poems in among the rest.
Only Sing, which includes both finished poems and drafts, isn’t merely the scraps left on a cutting room floor; it is a continuation of the epic cycle, an additional set of poems that crack language open, an extension of Berryman’s brilliant account of madness shot through with searing insight.
- GenresPoetry
192 pages, Hardcover
Published December 9, 2025
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About the author
John Berryman
146 books245 followersJohn Allyn Berryman (originally John Allyn Smith) was an American poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are playful, witty, and morbid. Berryman committed suicide in 1972.
A pamphlet entitled Poems was published in 1942 and his first proper book, The Dispossessed, appeared six years later. Of his youthful self he said, 'I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.' His first major work, in which he began to develop his own unique style of writing, was Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, which appeared in Partisan Review in 1953 and was published as a book in 1956. Another pamphle.
His thought made pockets & the plane buckt, followed. It was the collection called Dream Songs that earned him the most admiration. The first volume, entitled 77 Dream Songs, was published in 1964 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The second volume, entitled His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, appeared in 1968.
The two volumes were combined as The Dream Songs in 1969. By that time Berryman, though not a "popular" poet, was well established as an important force in the literary world, and he was widely read among his contemporaries. In 1970 he published the drastically different Love & Fame. It received many negative reviews, along with a little praise, most notably from Saul Bellow and John Bailey. Despite its negative reception, its colloquial style and sexual forthrightness have influenced many younger poets, especially from Britain and Ireland. Delusions Etc., his bleak final collection, which he prepared for printing but did not live to see appear, continues in a similar vein. Another book of poems, Henry's Fate, culled from Berryman's manuscripts, appeared posthumously, as did a book of essays, The Freedom of the Poet, and some drafts of a novel, Recovery.
The poems that form Dream Songs involve a character who is by turns the narrator and the person addressed by a narrator. Because readers assumed that these voices were the poet speaking directly of himself, Berryman's poetry was considered part of the Confessional poetry movement. Berryman, however, scorned the idea that he was a Confessional poet.
A pamphlet entitled Poems was published in 1942 and his first proper book, The Dispossessed, appeared six years later. Of his youthful self he said, 'I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.' His first major work, in which he began to develop his own unique style of writing, was Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, which appeared in Partisan Review in 1953 and was published as a book in 1956. Another pamphle.
His thought made pockets & the plane buckt, followed. It was the collection called Dream Songs that earned him the most admiration. The first volume, entitled 77 Dream Songs, was published in 1964 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The second volume, entitled His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, appeared in 1968.
The two volumes were combined as The Dream Songs in 1969. By that time Berryman, though not a "popular" poet, was well established as an important force in the literary world, and he was widely read among his contemporaries. In 1970 he published the drastically different Love & Fame. It received many negative reviews, along with a little praise, most notably from Saul Bellow and John Bailey. Despite its negative reception, its colloquial style and sexual forthrightness have influenced many younger poets, especially from Britain and Ireland. Delusions Etc., his bleak final collection, which he prepared for printing but did not live to see appear, continues in a similar vein. Another book of poems, Henry's Fate, culled from Berryman's manuscripts, appeared posthumously, as did a book of essays, The Freedom of the Poet, and some drafts of a novel, Recovery.
The poems that form Dream Songs involve a character who is by turns the narrator and the person addressed by a narrator. Because readers assumed that these voices were the poet speaking directly of himself, Berryman's poetry was considered part of the Confessional poetry movement. Berryman, however, scorned the idea that he was a Confessional poet.
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January 11, 2026like the best and worst of berryman; smug, mawkish, eloquent, florid, masturbatory, and brilliant. he was and remains a singular voice in american poetry, that we must never let leave our collective memory, which, i assume, is much to the chagrin of his own henry pussycat.
March 16, 2026
If you're sequencing 152 "songs" and using alphabetization of the first line as your sole sequence principle, then imagine of that 152, 12 songs begin with an "A" indefinite article or a "the" definite article. In the sub-set of 12, the effect, within the sequence, of randomization, heightens. 152 is a large number, 12 a more manageable, though no less indifferent, one. The editor of this volume, Shane McCrae, to whom we owe some gratitude, since there seems to have been for fifty years zero inclination to bring to print what John Berryman's earlier editor, John Haffenden, had described as "several hundred unpublished Dream Songs," makes his reader do a piece of work I would not abdicate were I editing such a volume. Haffenden was speaking in 1976 of his own work in culling 45 previously unpublished Dream Songs for his own edited 1977 posthumous volume, Henry's Fate -- 45 culled from among those left unpublished when Berryman himself edited His Toy, His Dream, His Rest in 1967. In brief, it sounds like a complete Dream Songs is about 500-600 songs, of which we're now aware of some 570 -- though I suspect, with no confirmation from Haffenden & McCrae, that periodical Dream Song publication during the poet's life has been left unacknowledged by either of these editors, both of whom are very much still with us.
The effect of heightened randomization the present volume gives off is a little strange. As is the two posthumous textual editors' quite disparate rationales for inclusion and sequencing. In short, Berryman textual scholarship -- I include in my thought the 1989 Collected Poems that ordered itself along an axis of non-Dream Song verse -- is a mess, and from what I can judge upon rapid perusal, the critical scholarship's not much further along. Where they meet: What is a dream song? 18 lines of Shakespearean diction, so roughly blank verse, in three sestets of nearly-constant if irregular rhyme. There are exceptions, some quite famous, of course. In the mid-Fifties when Berryman began to write them, he was also writing sonnets, as well as responding to Olson's Maximus, Duncan's "endless series" The Structure of Rime, Cage & the new music composers' experiments in seriality, etc. McCrae's claims (gleaned from some verbal-space-clearing by the author) that Berryman is embarked on an "American Epic" really just substitutes "epic" for Whitman's "The United States is really the greatest poem." Is it an epic? Or a way of managing Berryman's own "endless series"? It looks very much like a journal to me, when you get a song responding to the author's winning two prizes in 1969 -- conveniently dating a song for those who've familiarized themselves with the biography. The lack of context is not like a journal, however, and the randomization only heightens our disorientation. Late in the sequence -- indifferently, the poems are un-numbered (but it's #144)-- a remembrance of Einstein at Princeton in the late '30s, parallels a 1962 letter to Edward Hoagland, thus dating the song to (likely) 1962, but what context has to do here is -- go figure.
Throughout, however, the Berryman voice -- that "Fool's performance," as George Oppen panned one public experience of it -- which is mawkish, horny and omnivorously, movingly human by turns.
The effect of heightened randomization the present volume gives off is a little strange. As is the two posthumous textual editors' quite disparate rationales for inclusion and sequencing. In short, Berryman textual scholarship -- I include in my thought the 1989 Collected Poems that ordered itself along an axis of non-Dream Song verse -- is a mess, and from what I can judge upon rapid perusal, the critical scholarship's not much further along. Where they meet: What is a dream song? 18 lines of Shakespearean diction, so roughly blank verse, in three sestets of nearly-constant if irregular rhyme. There are exceptions, some quite famous, of course. In the mid-Fifties when Berryman began to write them, he was also writing sonnets, as well as responding to Olson's Maximus, Duncan's "endless series" The Structure of Rime, Cage & the new music composers' experiments in seriality, etc. McCrae's claims (gleaned from some verbal-space-clearing by the author) that Berryman is embarked on an "American Epic" really just substitutes "epic" for Whitman's "The United States is really the greatest poem." Is it an epic? Or a way of managing Berryman's own "endless series"? It looks very much like a journal to me, when you get a song responding to the author's winning two prizes in 1969 -- conveniently dating a song for those who've familiarized themselves with the biography. The lack of context is not like a journal, however, and the randomization only heightens our disorientation. Late in the sequence -- indifferently, the poems are un-numbered (but it's #144)-- a remembrance of Einstein at Princeton in the late '30s, parallels a 1962 letter to Edward Hoagland, thus dating the song to (likely) 1962, but what context has to do here is -- go figure.
Throughout, however, the Berryman voice -- that "Fool's performance," as George Oppen panned one public experience of it -- which is mawkish, horny and omnivorously, movingly human by turns.
March 14, 2026
This is not one of those posthumous books filled with half-baked poems that were never meant to see the light of day. These are the real article, a worthy extension of the idiosyncratic epic of Berryman's Henry. This is a treasure for lovers of The Dream Songs.
February 26, 2026
Oddly synchronous
March 24, 2026
The Master.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews