John Berryman

John Berryman (October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) was born in McAlester, Oklahoma. Berryman graduated from Columbia University in 1936. His work 77 Dream Songs, was published in 1964 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The second volume of Dream Songs, entitled His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, appeared in 1968.

While Berryman was on the faculty of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, W. D. Snodgrass, the original confessional poet, was one of the members of his class. "I have been very fortunate twice in my career as a student of poetry," William Dickey wrote in Ed Dinger's Seems Like Old Times, "first to have been at Reed College as an undergraduate with Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch, second to have been in John Berryman's extraordinary and intense poetry workshop with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, Philip Levine, Paul Petrie, Robert Dana, Constance Urdang, Jane Cooper, Donald Finkel, Henri Coulette".

John Berryman won the 1965 Pulitzer for 77 Dream Songs. He was a former faculty member in the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Poetry |Faculty |Iowa Writers' Workshop
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