Fidelity, and dandelions grown
As big elephants, your morning lust
Can neither name nor control. No time for shame,
Whippoorwill calling, excrement falling, time
Rushes like a madman forward. Nothing can be known.

This collection caught me unprepared. John Berryman unleashes the wretched roar of creation, all matter and ideas shoved gasping into our hostile world. The predicament is myriad. Survive, the poet implores. The Homage to Mistress Bradstreet is a peculiar monstrosity, the poet (narrator) attempts a dialogue with Anne Bradstreet, a poet herself who travelled to the New World in the early 17th Century and despite all manner of hardship cared for her family, bore children and maintained a poetic disposition in lieu of the gnashing mortality which surrounded her.

The other poems are just as burnished --and brutal. Just remember, No time for shame. ( )