John Berryman's 100th Birthday

The poet John Berryman would have been 100 years old this Saturday. Here’s a poem I wrote about visiting the site of his suicide. 

Washington Avenue Bridge

“to tilt out, with the knife in my right hand
to slash me knocked or fainting till I’d fall
unable to keep my skull down but fearless”

—John Berryman

Here, we stand

facing north

and leaning forward—

the railing halving us

and preventing us

from tilting out

as Berryman did,

shocked and fainting

falling through

that January cold

to the bank below

frozen hard as stone

that early into the new year.

Now, it’s June

and we have made our way

from Arthur Avenue—

from the house he left that morning,

from that last meal,

that last drink,

that last written word

on that last X’ed-out sheet of paper—

to this place,

following his short via crucis,

keeping and pausing at each station

where he stumbled

or wavered

or looked back the way he came

to this two-tiered goal,

to this place

where whatever martyrdom

he planned for himself awaited him—

a throat not cut after all,

no gush of blood

to bring on the final resolve to tip out

into the air

and attempt flight.

Here are the foot spaces,

where he last touched ground

before the fall,

where he grasped the rail,

swaying out.

We kneel and touch the pavement

and grasp what he grasped

and gaze at what he gazed at last

through those frosted-over lenses.

We do it the way pilgrims do

in Chimayó or Široki Brijeg,

touching whatever has been made holy

by the violent witness

the saint made in blood.

We are pilgrims

because he was who he was

to us and to all that we

have carried with us all this way—

to this ledge, to this railing,

to this sweep of earth and river

beneath us

that makes us dizzy

and faint and unwilling

to attempt

like him

to fly.

From Crow, copyright (c) 2012 by Jamie Parsley.

John Berryman (1914-1972) was an American poet who, on January 7, 1972, jumped to his death from the Washington Avenue Bridge on the campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. At the time of his death, he was living at 33 Arthur Avenue in southeast Minneapolis. Chimayó is a popular pilgrimage site in northern New Mexico. Šokori Brijeg is the site in the former Yugoslavia where forty-three Roman Catholic Franciscan priests and brothers were murdered by Communist Partisans on February 18, 1945.