Well done, all around. I'm with you on what kind of lynching is going on here. Attending to contrasts (the men's hats down versus the speaker being jerked up, e.g.) helps, as well as the idea of so many parked spectators, lights on and radios blaring. The images of treed "coons" elsewhere, by the way, resonate horribly with this one. Another contrast: the pinched chest versus the fathomless heart, which makes me think of the "control-less core of the human heart" in Byron's DJ. Perhaps worth considering: Henry in or observing similar kinds of situations in #s 8-12.
Thank you! So many excellent points. And yes, re 8-12, one of my worries is precisely Henry identifying with the victim not in imaginative empathy but self-pitying analogy - imagining his own plights to in some way be commensurate, as with Bogart & the other poems of persecution in this section of the book (I'd extend it to 13, I think), and in, eg, Henry as the treed 'coon of DS57. It was one of my worries in DS2. In DS77 by foregrounding Henry's whiteness and referring obliquely & directly to the political situation Berryman does (and surely deliberately) make the difficult issues unignorable; but it was regarded as a risky business even at the time, and I am in no hurry to smooth over his/their/our discomfort.
This took over my morning.
That is a lovely thing to hear. Thank you.
Well done, all around. I'm with you on what kind of lynching is going on here. Attending to contrasts (the men's hats down versus the speaker being jerked up, e.g.) helps, as well as the idea of so many parked spectators, lights on and radios blaring. The images of treed "coons" elsewhere, by the way, resonate horribly with this one. Another contrast: the pinched chest versus the fathomless heart, which makes me think of the "control-less core of the human heart" in Byron's DJ. Perhaps worth considering: Henry in or observing similar kinds of situations in #s 8-12.
Thank you! So many excellent points. And yes, re 8-12, one of my worries is precisely Henry identifying with the victim not in imaginative empathy but self-pitying analogy - imagining his own plights to in some way be commensurate, as with Bogart & the other poems of persecution in this section of the book (I'd extend it to 13, I think), and in, eg, Henry as the treed 'coon of DS57. It was one of my worries in DS2. In DS77 by foregrounding Henry's whiteness and referring obliquely & directly to the political situation Berryman does (and surely deliberately) make the difficult issues unignorable; but it was regarded as a risky business even at the time, and I am in no hurry to smooth over his/their/our discomfort.
(Minor correction: When I said "in DS77" I meant "in 77DS", ie in the whole book, not simply the last poem.)
Brilliant. Utterly absorbing. Thank you.