Tuesday, 4/13/10

by musicclipoftheday

street music

Milan

Saxophonist outside Duomo di Milano

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lagniappe

reading table

Hearing John Berryman read his poetry changed my life, as I said a while back. I was in college at the time. A year later, he was dead—a suicide (jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis, where he lived and taught). Here, in Dublin in 1967, he reads one of his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Dream Songs (29). Drunk, mannered, idiosyncratic: yes, yes, yes. Obscure at times to the point of opacity: yes. But also (to these ears) exquisitely controlled, deeply moving, utterly unforgettable.

(Want to read this yourself? Here.)