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Poets in Their Youth: A Memoir
In 1942, Eileen Simpson—then Eileen Mulligan—married John Berryman. Both were in their twenties; Eileen had just graduated from Hunter College and John had but one slim volume of poetry to his name. They moved frequently—from New York to Boston, then Princeton—chasing jobs, living simply, relying on the hospitality of more successful friends like Robert Lowell and Jean Stafford, or R. P. Blackmur and his wife, Helen. Rounding out their circle of intimates were other struggling poets like Randall Jarrell and Delmore Schwartz. Berryman alternately wrote and despaired of writing. Everyone stayed up late arguing about poetry.
Poets in Their Youth is a portrait of their marriage, yes, but it is also a portrait of a group of spectacularly intelligent friends at a particular time, in a particular place, all aflame with literature. Simpson’s recollections are so tender, her narrative so generous, it is almost possible to imagine the story has a different ending—even as Schwartz’s marriage crumbles, as Lowell succumbs to a manic episode, as her own relationship with Berryman buckles under the strain of his drinking, his infidelity, his depression.
Filled with winning anecdotes and moments of startling poignancy, Simpson’s now classic memoir shows some of the most brilliant literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century at their brightest and most achingly human.
Poets in Their Youth is a portrait of their marriage, yes, but it is also a portrait of a group of spectacularly intelligent friends at a particular time, in a particular place, all aflame with literature. Simpson’s recollections are so tender, her narrative so generous, it is almost possible to imagine the story has a different ending—even as Schwartz’s marriage crumbles, as Lowell succumbs to a manic episode, as her own relationship with Berryman buckles under the strain of his drinking, his infidelity, his depression.
Filled with winning anecdotes and moments of startling poignancy, Simpson’s now classic memoir shows some of the most brilliant literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century at their brightest and most achingly human.
289 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 5, 2011
This is a wonderful wallow in the lives of formerly well-known literary lions who have probably lost their shelf-life. Eileen Simpson, the first wife of John Berryman,(who?) reminiscences about Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford, Ezra Pound and A. Alvarez, some of the better known. They all had "breakdowns" and spent time in mental hospitals. They all had writer's block and missed deadline upon deadline. They couldn't keep their professorial jobs or any job for long, because they were, of course, POETS. Nevertheless, Simpson remembers the best of times when she writes about weeks and days and evenings spent amidst members of the group where they talked for hours, days, weeks about literature. And music. What were the favorite three stanzas of poetry in the world? is the question Berryman and his counterparts would discuss over and over again. They had picnics and drank, and danced and partied and drank, and drank, and drank. And, many of them died early. This book was a Christmas present and I raced through it and drank and drank and drank of the wit, the sorrow, the brillance and the energy of this group of vastly creative icons.
March 28, 2012
Painful. Gossipy. At times even trashy. Required reading.
June 8, 2015
Most of these poets I hadn't read (Berryman, Jarrell, Schwarz) or had only read a little (Lowell). There are so many revealing and fascinating stories here, with such intimate detail about the lives of these American poets. In line with Eileen Simpson's best hopes for this memoir, I will be seeking them out: "It pleased me greatly to be told by those who wrote me about my memoir that the book had sent them back to the poetry... I hope this new edition will also send readers to the poems themselves." Back to the poems, then.
March 28, 2013
I seriously underestimated my interest in this book. Loved it. Any recommendations for similiar works?
November 22, 2024
I suspect this is the kind of book that will stay with me for years. A fascinating glimpse into a world I know nothing about.
Kind of bad as a memoir, however- chronologically confusing and the author assumes we know a lot of names/events. -1 star.
Kind of bad as a memoir, however- chronologically confusing and the author assumes we know a lot of names/events. -1 star.
March 17, 2021
I know little of poets and poetry, so I came to this book through On Writing Well, which recommends Poets in Their Youth as an exemplary "hindsight" memoir. Now finished, I agree.
As groups of brilliant, mostly-American writers from the 1940s talk until the wee hours about poetry, Simpson recalls their memorable moments, from the funny, to the maniacal, to the tragically self-destructive.
Prior knowledge of the poets isn't necessary. Simpson has a way of seeing through each of them, boosted by 40 years of hindsight and a career in psychiatry. She's a reliable and insightful chronicler of these complex creative communities, in which all the anxiety, pain, and trauma is seen as worth it if it yields one thing: poems.
As groups of brilliant, mostly-American writers from the 1940s talk until the wee hours about poetry, Simpson recalls their memorable moments, from the funny, to the maniacal, to the tragically self-destructive.
Prior knowledge of the poets isn't necessary. Simpson has a way of seeing through each of them, boosted by 40 years of hindsight and a career in psychiatry. She's a reliable and insightful chronicler of these complex creative communities, in which all the anxiety, pain, and trauma is seen as worth it if it yields one thing: poems.
July 1, 2019
Wonderful.
June 12, 2015
Why would a book like this ever go out of print? I like her thoughts at the end-- that it wasn't poetry that killed her husband; it was poetry that allowed him to live.
September 15, 2024
Berryman committed suicide in 1972.
His Goodreads profile features that sentence and when I came across it I felt like I was spoiled before I reach the ending of a story. I was 3/4 book deep and curious about what he'd written after 1953. Was at the end of "The Colour of This Soul" and wanted to add some of his books to my to-reads. It was a bit funny. And astringent. Though I should have expected it, after all, "the litany of suicides among poets is long".
John Berryman had lost to his longtime "subtle foe".
I didn't pick this book because I wanted to read about John Berryman (and other poets) from the point of view of his ex-wife. I came to know about Berryman because something-year-old me - for reasons I don't remember anymore - randomly picked a book called Poets in Their Youth by someone random called Eileen Simpson and put it in my Goodreads to-read list. Maybe I was posessed by those soft-grunge tumblr posts on a rainy day? Pretty sure it happened a lot back then.
Reading about a man from the point of view of his ex-wife and then finding out that he happened to be one of the most important figures of American poetry of the 20th century is a unique experience. I'd recommend people to try it sometimes. When I eventually read his work later, I might play guess-who and guess-when and other guessing games cause I stumbled upon him first instead of his writings.
That aside, I'd like to express appreciation to Eileen Simpson and John Berryman for their respective works. Especially Eileen Simpson for writing this book - that I somehow found - and reintroduced me, at the time when I need it, to this line:
"We must travel in the direction of our fear."
Pretty sure I saw this on tumblr too some years ago with no regards to its author. Maybe it's the tumblr posession I should be thankful of.
Touched on by the book was the 1940s-1950s generation of poets in America, especially those who flew in and out of the East Coast academia. Also, unsuprisingly, the failed marriages in the world of poetry. Simpson quoted a page of Freud's The General Introduction to Psychoanalysis to explain the why to this pattern: male poets had to have something to do with manic episodes or depression or womanizing or adultery, and becoming alcoholics. Or the reverse. They could maybe narrowly escape the other downfalls, but not alcoholism.
The women were the same but without the womanizing and adultery. Unsurprising.
It's bittersweet to end this book as another chapter of my life comes to a close. And cause it's not fiction, I was overcome with familiarity at these struggles, these impatience, these ruminations, these mapping of the tracks forward, these acts of dreaming. Time has come, I guess, when I should make efforts to travel in the direction of my fears.
3.5/5
edit: No, it wasn't those soft-grunge tumblr posts that posessed me. This was recommended by Stephen King in his own memoir, On Writing.
His Goodreads profile features that sentence and when I came across it I felt like I was spoiled before I reach the ending of a story. I was 3/4 book deep and curious about what he'd written after 1953. Was at the end of "The Colour of This Soul" and wanted to add some of his books to my to-reads. It was a bit funny. And astringent. Though I should have expected it, after all, "the litany of suicides among poets is long".
John Berryman had lost to his longtime "subtle foe".
I didn't pick this book because I wanted to read about John Berryman (and other poets) from the point of view of his ex-wife. I came to know about Berryman because something-year-old me - for reasons I don't remember anymore - randomly picked a book called Poets in Their Youth by someone random called Eileen Simpson and put it in my Goodreads to-read list. Maybe I was posessed by those soft-grunge tumblr posts on a rainy day? Pretty sure it happened a lot back then.
Reading about a man from the point of view of his ex-wife and then finding out that he happened to be one of the most important figures of American poetry of the 20th century is a unique experience. I'd recommend people to try it sometimes. When I eventually read his work later, I might play guess-who and guess-when and other guessing games cause I stumbled upon him first instead of his writings.
That aside, I'd like to express appreciation to Eileen Simpson and John Berryman for their respective works. Especially Eileen Simpson for writing this book - that I somehow found - and reintroduced me, at the time when I need it, to this line:
"We must travel in the direction of our fear."
Pretty sure I saw this on tumblr too some years ago with no regards to its author. Maybe it's the tumblr posession I should be thankful of.
Touched on by the book was the 1940s-1950s generation of poets in America, especially those who flew in and out of the East Coast academia. Also, unsuprisingly, the failed marriages in the world of poetry. Simpson quoted a page of Freud's The General Introduction to Psychoanalysis to explain the why to this pattern: male poets had to have something to do with manic episodes or depression or womanizing or adultery, and becoming alcoholics. Or the reverse. They could maybe narrowly escape the other downfalls, but not alcoholism.
The women were the same but without the womanizing and adultery. Unsurprising.
It's bittersweet to end this book as another chapter of my life comes to a close. And cause it's not fiction, I was overcome with familiarity at these struggles, these impatience, these ruminations, these mapping of the tracks forward, these acts of dreaming. Time has come, I guess, when I should make efforts to travel in the direction of my fears.
3.5/5
edit: No, it wasn't those soft-grunge tumblr posts that posessed me. This was recommended by Stephen King in his own memoir, On Writing.
February 12, 2020
Great thrift-store find, bought it on Friday, started on Saturday, really got into it Monday and finished it last night. Eileen Simpson paints an exuberant but melancholy look at her life with John Berryman and their circle of friends (including Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Delmore Schwartz). A good literary and biographical tome for anyone interested in the toll of the artistic life on other aspects of life
February 27, 2021
I read this a long time ago and loved it. Recently I suggested it to a friend and he was wild about it.
If you are interested in the poets that came before the Beats this fills you in on a whole generation that came first.
If you are interested in the poets that came before the Beats this fills you in on a whole generation that came first.
April 2, 2025
If you were wondering what they were like off the page, then this is the book. Lowell, Berryman, Jarrell, Roethke, Wilson, and Stafford are all here in various roles. Not much Hardwick or Bishop and no Blackwood.
August 5, 2017
I thought reading this book was painful and I was so happy when I was finished.
Read
November 17, 2014I was attracted by the title of the book, "Poets in their youth". We read about the 'official' biographies of them but there is always something missing in them. This books is written by Eileen Simpson (John Berryman's first wife); both were part of the group of youth poets come together in the late thirties. She describes the times, the hardships, the friendship, also the breakdowns... All of them, Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, her own husband, etc. went thru manic depression episodes, drinking, chasing jobs (poets do not really make a lot of money), etc. What is heartening to read is that in spite of everything they really enjoy each other's company, criticism, and friendship.
I found ironic that William Wordsworth quote is a perfect epitaph for all of these poets.
“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
It has also brought back memories of my younger self when I wanted to write poetry.
I found ironic that William Wordsworth quote is a perfect epitaph for all of these poets.
“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
It has also brought back memories of my younger self when I wanted to write poetry.
May 8, 2008
This is the "inside" story of the poets one reads about ... John Berryman, Delmore Schwarz, Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, those guys. On the one hand it seems quite a drab lot - as one would probably discover the Bloomsbury group was too - on the other, one gets information that one doesn't read about anywhere else.
November 30, 2011
Great to get a sense of what Berryman would have been like to have been around. Some fantastic anecdotes. Simpson has a very clear and engaging prose style, and, it would seem, a diminuitive ego--given how much she backgrounds herself and her own (considerable) accomplishments to allow Berryman and the other Literary figures in their lives to dominate the narrative.
October 19, 2013
This was a re-read. The first time I read it was for Liam Rector's seminar called something like "Poets & Madness," 8 years ago. A different mindset really changes the reading of it. The book is an almost gossipy love letter to an amazing generation of poets, with a little vein of sadness running through even the funniest and most charming parts, not unlike the poets themselves.
March 22, 2016
While the writing can at times be turgid, the portraits of the young Berryman, Lowell, Schwartz, Jarrell, Stafford and others are quite interesting, as are the photos, most from Simpson’s own collection (she was married to Berryman in her youth).
August 19, 2016
This was anything but the all too often self-induldgent memoir. Instead I learned so much about some of the greatest american poets. Fluid, shocking and heartbreakingly romantic. Eileen Simpson was a gifted novelist, and I wish she started at a younger age. Would recommend.
August 16, 2019
Invaluable for its impressions of the lives of Berryman, Lowell, Delmore Schwartz and Randall Jarrell, along with reminiscences of R. P. Blackmur, T.S. Eliot, Pound, Dylan Thomas, Roethke, Allen Tate, and others.
November 4, 2007
Read it with Kalstone's Becoming A Poet.
January 30, 2009
so far....Awesome!
October 17, 2014
Compelling story, and beautifully written. Won from a giveaway, and was not disappointed.
March 21, 2015
A really wonderful reminiscence of poets who belong to the most remarkable generation of writers to have come our way. I loved it! What a reading list!
Want to read
July 3, 2017Classier than Hochman's "Loving Robert Lowell," according to reviewer.
Read
July 16, 2017This spectacular memoir brings to life a world that perhaps we have lost with the communication the internet now offers. Eileen Simpson conjures the conversations she was very much a part of as the wife of John Berryman. The dinner parties and afternoon teas which revolved around these poets joint appreciation, their fascination with poetry and literature. She also analyses the work of Berryman, and gives us a glimpse into the hardship and the emotional instability most great poets suffer. Berryman said that he sometimes worried that happiness was unproductive to poetry, and so this is a story of poets making it and then quickly falling apart as they feel they will never write again.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews