| Summary: | "A lively sampling from the work of one of the most celebrated and daring poets of the twentieth century. Berryman wrote passionately: of love and despair, of grief and laughter, of longing for a better world and coming to terms with this one. The Heart Is Strange, a new selection of his poems, marks the centenary of his birth. It includes a generous selection from across Berryman's varied career: from his earliest poems, to his breakthrough masterpiece, "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet," then to his mature verses, and finally, to his late poems, in which he battles with sobriety and an increasingly religious sensibility. The defiant joy and wild genius of Berryman's work has been obscured by his struggles with mental illness and alcohol, his tempestuous relationships with women, and his suicide. This volume, which includes three previously uncollected poems and an insightful introduction by the editor Daniel Swift, celebrates the whole Berryman: tortured poet and teasing father, passionate lover and melancholy scholar."--
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