About Book IV

Book IV has a specific premise:  The speaker (of the whole book) is dead (perhaps he has recently died).  The poems are all titled, and they are titled as a series--- as "Op. posth. no. 1" through "Op. posth. no. 14."  Instead of posting one poem, I decided to post the first lines of the fourteen poems---in order---
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The First Lines of the Poems in Book IV of John Berryman’s Dream Songs

Darkened his eye, his wild smile disappeared,

Whence flew the litter whereon he was laid?

It’s buried at a distance, on my insistence, buried.

He loom’ so cagey he say ‘Leema beans’

Maskt as honours, insult like behaving

I recall a boil, whereupon as I had to sit,

Plop, plop.  The lobster toppled in the pot,

Flak.  An uneventful thought came to me,

The conclusion is growing …  I feel sure, my lord,

these hearings endlessly, friends, word is had

In slack times I visit the violent dead

In a blue series towards his sleepy eyes

In the night-reaches dreamed he of better graces,

Noises from the underground made gibber some