For a down-pulling read, try John Berryman
As a graduate student in 1988, I wrote a paper about the poet John Berryman, an American of the mid-twentieth century who had a tough life both as a child and as an adult. He was one of those people about whom I think, "Yes, they drank too much, but they had pretty good reasons." Now, in the year following the centenary of his birth, Farrar, Straus & Giroux is publishing a "New Selected Poems" of his work and releasing new editions of his other major works. Man, he is so great, but also so depressing. For weeks before attempting to present my paper, I found myself sunk into his brilliant gloom, and this sunkenness continued on the day I tried to present, finding my voice breaking, my eyes welling with tears, unable to continue for a few minutes. I completed it, though, to great silence from my classmates. More about Berryman and his writings can be found in Berryman: Tragedy & Comedy Together by Helen Vendler in the June 4, 2015 issue of New York Review of Books.
Roughly fifteen years after presenting that paper, I found myself in St. Paul, Minnesota, not far from the state university where Berryman taught for years and even nearer the bridge from which the poet jumped and killed himself on a cold winter day in 1972. Again, I found my eyes welling with tears, but conveniently distracted myself by visiting a nearby state museum, where I saw, among other things, the tiny suit worn by Prince in "Purple Rain."
For those of you who wish to find a comedic voice of despair that goes on and on eloquently in the character and sometimes the voice of the clearly suicidal Henry, read Berryman's The Dream Songs. You can find many of them online at this site.
Roughly fifteen years after presenting that paper, I found myself in St. Paul, Minnesota, not far from the state university where Berryman taught for years and even nearer the bridge from which the poet jumped and killed himself on a cold winter day in 1972. Again, I found my eyes welling with tears, but conveniently distracted myself by visiting a nearby state museum, where I saw, among other things, the tiny suit worn by Prince in "Purple Rain."
For those of you who wish to find a comedic voice of despair that goes on and on eloquently in the character and sometimes the voice of the clearly suicidal Henry, read Berryman's The Dream Songs. You can find many of them online at this site.