In the seventy-seventh of The Dream Songs, John Berryman writes, "these fierce & airy occupations, and love, / raved away so many of Henry's years." The pervasive tone of Berryman's life and writing, spanning the tired, mad, and lonely years from 1914 to 1972, is that of religious despair; somber and violent, the emphasis is on the grotesque dark night of the soul rather than the immaculate light of salvation.
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