My family and I are grateful to Philip Coleman and Calista McRae for their interest in the life of John Berryman, and we welcome this end result of their industry. This volume will be a valuable resource for people seeking to learn about Berryman. These letters connected a far-flung network of his friends and fellow writers, and are fascinating snapshots of the literary milieu of his time.
These days it’s without cost to pick up a telephone, send an email, or video chat with your friends and muses. But the documents here show the value of a letter writer’s solitary contemplation and painstaking committal of fleeting thoughts to paper. It seems to me that this encourages correspondents to work through their ideas in a way that does not arise with more direct communication.
Two biographies of Berryman have been written, but his letters represent a direct testimony in a voice that is substantially different from a biographer’s: the reader is listening in on the writer speaking about his life and work. We are happy that this long-anticipated edition will take its place alongside scholarship on John Berryman and will further enrich our understanding of the poet and his craft.
—MARTHA B. MAYOU