The Poetry of “Irresistible Descent”

 John Berryman in the Penal Colony  “Will power is nothing. Morals is nothing. Lord, this is illness.”—John Berryman, 1971A year before he committed suicide by jumping off a Minneapolis bridge in 1972, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Berryman had been in alcohol rehab three times, and had published a rambling, curious, unfinished book about his treatment experiences.Recovery is a time capsule. If you think we have little to offer addicts by way of treatment these days, consider the picture in the 60s and 70s. InRecovery, treatment consists almost entirely of Freudian group analysis, and while there is regular talk of alcoholism as a disease, AA style, there is no evidence that it was actually dealt with in this way, after detoxification.Best known for “Dream Songs,” Berryman taught at the University of Minnesota, and was known as a dedicated if irascible professor. Scientist Alan Severence, Berryman’s stand-in persona in the book, comes into rehab hard and recalcitrant, despite his previous failures: “Screw all these humorless bastard s sitting around congratulating themselves on being sober, what’s so wonderful about being sober? Great Christ, most of the world is sober, and look at it!”And he is suffering from “the even deeper delusion that my science and artdependedon my drinking, or at least were connected with it, could not be attacked directly. Too far down. ”Berryman was a difficult man, and knew it. He quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Wh...
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