John Berryman Couldn't Fly

I have had the wonderful opportunity to see the Hold Steady four times. I have even had the chance to chat Minnesota Twin’s baseball with lead singer Craig Finn. (I think Rod Carew or Harmon Killebrew is the best Twin’s players ever. He preferred Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek -- at least that night.) Mr. Finn also recounted meeting his real hero at a Twin’s game, former Replacement’s singer Paul Westerberg. (He was really short.)

Although I have always been sucked into The Hold Steady’s tunes by Tad Kubler’s straight-forward power chord guitar playing, Craig Finn’s lyrics frequently haunt me -- especially one song in particular: Stuck Between Stations.

I don’t know poetry. I don’t understand it. And until this song came out, I didn’t know who John Berryman was.

I stumbled upon this old interview, published on the Paris Review site, taken from the original issue published in the winter of 1972. In it, among other things, Berryman explains his life as a poet and poetry in academia. (“It’s a harmless industry. It gets people degrees. I don’t feel against it, and I don’t feel for it. I sympathize with the students.”) He was asked to rank the poets of his day. (“...most of these characters are personal friends of mine, and you just don’t sit around ranking your friends.”) But even more interesting were his thoughts on what it takes to be a truly great poet:

“My idea is this: The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he’s in business. Beethoven’s deafness, Goya’s deafness, Milton’s blindness, that kind of thing. And I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will probably largely depend not on my sitting calmly on my ass as I think, “Hmm, hmm, a long poem again? Hmm,” but on being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short of senile dementia. At that point, I’m out, but short of that, I don’t know. I hope to be nearly crucified.”

John Barryman never lived to be crucified. On a cold morning in January of 1972, he threw himself off the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The devil and John Berryman
Took a walk together.
They ended up on Washington
Talking to the river.
He said “I’ve surrounded myself with doctors
And deep thinkers.
But big heads with soft bodies
Make for lousy lovers.”
There was that night that we thought John Berryman could fly.
But he didn’t

So he died.
She said “You’re pretty good with words
But words won’t save your life.”
And they didn’t.
So he died.

He was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and respected.
He loved the Golden Gophers but he hated all the drawn out winters.
He likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration
Most nights were kind of fuzzy
But that last night he had total retention.

These Twin Cities kisses
Sound like clicks and hisses.
We all tumbled down and
Drowned in the Mississippi River.

We drink
We dry up
Then we crumble to dust

From: Stuck Between Stations by The Hold Steady



No poetry for me.