Dream Song 14 Essay

John Berryman’s Dream Songs are well known for their bizarre subject matter, wrenching syntax, and unique point of view. The Dream Songs are told through the voice of Henry, a depressed, slightly insane creation of Berryman’s imagination who sometimes bears remarkable similarities to author. Trying to find pattern and syntactical importance in the wildly creative verse can seem difficult. However if we closely examine one of the Dream Songs, in this case Dream Song 14, with knowledge gained from The Poem’s Heartbeat it can help enhance the reading and understanding the development of the themes throughout the poem. Dream Song 14 is composed of three stanzas, each stanza is made up of six lines. Each stanza contains its own idea or
Upon my first scan of the poem, I was thrown off because there did seem to be some loose pentameter and tetrameter, but then I was always met with something, a word or words, with unexpected meter. However, what was unexpected was also what was most interesting. That’s when I realized the poem truly embodied free verse because, to quote Alfred Corn, author of The Poem’s Heartbeat “free verse by its very nature resists codification.” (p.149, Heartbeat) Dream Song 14 is a fitting poem to be written in free verse, because we are in Berryman’s dream world and subjected to his unpredictable rules. However there is one clearly visible pattern. Each Stanza consists of four long lines and two shorter lines. To paraphrase Corn, unmetered poetry allows certain words or phrases to be spotlighted, by putting special attention on them. (p.147)
By understanding the growth and expansion of a poem from stanza to stanza, we are able to discern what is most important. When we become aware of what is important we are able to understand themes and sometimes foggy meanings of poems. Reading Dream Song 14 using knowledge from chapters about stanzas, free verse, and refrain help us understand more about the poem and read it in a more appreciative