The Dream Songs

The Dream Songs is a compilation of two books of poetry, 77 Dream Songs (1964) and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968) by the American poet, John Berryman. According to Berryman’s “Note” to The Dream Songs, “This volume combines 77 Dream Songs and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, comprising Books I through VII of a poem whose working title, since 1955, has been The Dream Songs.”[1] So as this note indicates, Berryman clearly intended the two books to be read as a single work. In total, the work consists of 385 individual poems. The book is listed on the American Academy of Poets website as one of their Groundbreaking Books of the 20th Century.[2] The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry editors call The Dream Songs, “[John Berryman’s] major work” and they go on to note that “[the poems] form, like his friend Robert Lowell’s Notebook, a poetic journal, and represent half phantasmagorically, the changes in Berryman’s mood and attitude.”[3] The dream song form consists of three stanzas, divided into six lines per stanza. The poems are in free verse with irregular rhyme schemes. The songs are all numbered but only some of them have individual titles.