John Berryman killed himself by leaping from a bridge on January 7, 1972. In doing so, he followed in his father’s footsteps, a man who had shot himself to death when the poet was twelve years old. Berryman spent his entire life struggling with the image of his father’s death, exploring that and other deeply emotional themes through an alter ego named Henry, a character who populated Berryman’s “Dream Songs” poems. Despite his obsession, Berryman directly addressed his father’s suicide only once, in Dream Song #384. What resulted was perhaps one of the most powerful poems of the twentieth century.

Dream Song 384 

The marker slants, flowerless, day’s almost done,
I stand above my father’s grave with rage,
often, often before
I’ve made this awful pilgrimage to one
who cannot visit me, who tore his page
out: I come back for more,

I spit upon this dreadful banker’s grave
who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn
O ho alas alas
When will indifference come, I moan & rave
I’d like to scrabble till I got right down
away down under the grass

and ax the casket open ha to see
just how he’s taking it, which he sought so hard
we’ll tear apart
the mouldering grave clothes ha & then Henry
will heft the ax once more, his final card,
and fell it on the start.