Description
Presentation copy, from the library of literary critic George Steiner (1929-2020). With season’s greetings listing Berryman’s third wife, Kay Donahue, daughter Martha, and lifelong friend and editor Robert Giroux. Octavo, 5 ½ x 8 ½”, 7 pp. Stapled yellow cardstock. The two poems are In Memoriam (1914-1953), for Dylan Thomas, and Another New Year's Eve (1970). Very good condition.
Inscribed to Steiner: “With thanks for instruction and pleasure—also you write better than any critic since Empson. Also you once coupled me w. Pound, wh. touched me: the Cantos are a mess (exc.13 or the Pisan run) but I love the old man. John Berryman”
The coupling in question is from Steiner’s essay “Silence and the Poet” (1966): “From Arion and Orpheus to Ezra Pound and John Berryman, the poet is maker of songs and singer of words.” Berryman would kill himself in Minnesota just a couple of years later, and Pound too would die late in ‘72.
