[3] Similarly, in Dream Song #384, Berryman wrote: The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done, I stand above my father's grave with rage, often, often before I've made this awful pilgrimage to one who cannot visit me, who tore his page out: I come back for more,

I spit upon this dreadful bankers grave who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn After his father's death at the rear entrance to Kipling Arms, where the Smiths rented an apartment, the poet's mother, within months, married John Angus McAlpin Berryman in New York City.

Berryman's early work formed part of a volume titled Five Young American Poets, published by New Directions in 1940.

"[8] In October 1942, Berryman married Eileen Mulligan (later Simpson) in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Van Doren as his best man.

The marriage ended in 1953 (the divorce was formalized in 1956), when Simpson finally grew weary of Berryman's affairs and acting as "net-holder" during his self-destructive personal crises.

It won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and solidified Berryman's standing as one of the most important poets of the post-World War II generation that included Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Delmore Schwartz.

[5] Berryman was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967,[12] and that same year Life magazine ran a feature story on him.

Responses to the poems from critics and most of Berryman's peers ranged from tepid to hostile; the collection is now generally "considered a minor work".

In a 2009 interview, Levine said Berryman took his class extremely seriously and that "he was entrancing ... magnetic and inspiring and very hard on [his students'] work ... [and] he was [also] the best teacher that I ever had".

[15] Berryman was fired from the University of Iowa after a fight with his landlord led to his being arrested, jailed overnight, and fined for disorderly conduct and public intoxication.

"[5] Nevertheless, Berryman continued to abuse alcohol and struggle with depression, as he had throughout much of his life, and on the morning of January 7, 1972, he killed himself by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis onto the west bank of the Mississippi River.

The editors of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry note that "the influence of Yeats, Auden, Hopkins, Crane, and Pound on him was strong, and Berryman's own voice—by turns nerve-racked and sportive—took some time to be heard.

The Times Literary Supplement hailed it as a path-breaking masterpiece; poet Robert Fitzgerald called it 'the poem of his generation.

'"[17] Edward Hirsch observed that "the 57 stanzas of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet combine the concentration of an extended lyric with the erudition and amplitude of a historical novel".

"[19] John Malcolm Brinnin, reviewing 77 Dream Songs in The New York Times, wrote that its "excellence calls for celebration".

[20] Robert Lowell wrote in The New York Review of Books, "At first the brain aches and freezes at so much darkness, disorder and oddness.

Berryman's last two volumes of poetry, Love & Fame and Delusions, Etc., featured free-verse poems that were much more straightforward and less idiosyncratic than The Dream Songs.

Before Love & Fame's publication, Berryman sent his manuscript to several peers for feedback, including the poets Adrienne Rich and Richard Wilbur, both of whom were disappointed with the poems, which they considered inferior to those of The Dream Songs.

[5] But some of Berryman's old friends and supporters, including Lowell, the novelist Saul Bellow, and the poet William Meredith, offered high praise for a number of the Love & Fame poems.

"[18] Hirsch also wrote that, "[Collected Poems features] a thorough nine-part introduction and a chronology as well as helpful appendixes that include Berryman's published prefaces, notes and dedications; a section of editor's notes, guidelines and procedures; and an account of the poems in their final stages of composition and publication.

Although portions of Berryman's late work are sloppy and erratic, these poems help clarify the spiritual struggle that motivates and sustains his best writing.