Better living through chemistry

It may be that few posts on this blog will revolve around a central idea or point. Except for those made up mainly of a poem. Berryman:

Dream Song 45

He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back.

He thought they was old friends. He felt on the stair

where her papa found them bare

they became familiar. When the papers were lost

rich with pals' secrets, he thought he had the knack

of ruin. Their paths crossed

and once they crossed in jail; they crossed in bed;

and over an unsigned letter their eyes met,

and in an Asian city

directionless & lurchy at two & three,

or trembling to a telephone's fresh threat,

and when some wired his head

to reach a wrong opinion, 'Epileptic'.

But he noted now that: they were not old friends.

He did not know this one.

This one was a stranger, come to make amends

for all the imposters, and to make it stick.

Henry nodded, un-.

---

This is a poem that couldn't really be written now. The "un-" would seem contrived, partly because of the need for a rhyme with "one," partly for the sake of being clever. But the poem contains (truly) a violent realization: what seemed like destruction only foreshadowed the possible extent of pain. Despite the poem's list of familiarity with the "imposters," Berryman chooses only to gesture at what the real ruin might be. Henry (Berryman's surrogate) has an insight that undoes him: what resides in his head turns out to be the strange but true ruination. Henry can only nod (affirm what's happening), nod it (move ruin's container) and nod at it (acknowledge the unmaking of himself). On all three levels, the nod leads inexorably to the interrupted dead end. 

That end fits, in terms of tone and rhyme. Although 45 does not follow a strict form, one can see rhyme schemes that are consistent within each 6-line stanza: ABBCAC; ABCCBA(or even AABBAA, if you like the slant);and ABCBAC. 

To take the poem at its word, though, would be a mistake. For despite the suicidal ideation present in the poem, Berryman plays, undercutting the poem's gravity. He uses near homonyms (stared, stair), dream-like associations (telephone, wired), and lots of internal rhyme, slant rhyme, and what might be called inverted rhyme (fresh threat). The repetition of phrases instantiates the false familiarity that the text addresses, but the shift in verb, from was to were, shows a change in register.

In the final analysis, Berryman's speaker (who is Henry and who is also Berryman) ridicules himself, his fears, and his ultimate destruction, after which is silence.