John Berryman

In 1969, Berryman was appointed Regents' Professor of Humanities, and Drake University bestowed upon him an honorary degree. With The Dream Songs Berryman was widely recognized as a great American poet. Unfortunately, his subsequent work lack the brilliance of The Dream Songs. In Love and Fame (1970) his return to lyric form brought forth verse that was sometimes witty and ironic and sometimes vulgar and offensive. He continued to abuse alcohol, and sometimes during his lectures, his words were thick and his emotions extreme due to the effects of his drinking. He checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation center once in 1969 and three times in 1970. He penned Recovery, (1973) an autobiographical novel of a recovering alcoholic, which reviewers agreed was more important as an account of Berryman's personal life than as a novel. His last book of poems, Delusions, Etc., contained individual poems that revealed Berryman at his best, but as a whole did not satisfy the critics nor compare in importance to his earlier works, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and Dream Songs.

In 1971, Berryman was awarded a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, enabling him to complete his critical biography on Shakespeare. Unfortunately, he could not find his way out of the same despair and indulgence that made his poetry so unique and powerful. On January 7, 1972, still haunted by his own father's suicide and with his youngest daughter just six months old, Berryman ended his life by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota.