The poetry of John Berryman occupies an incomparable place in modern American literature. This study traces the composition of the major poems, and interprets Berryman's characteristic trials and his imaginative triumphs. In Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, which Edmund Wilson called ' the most distinguished long poem by an American since The Waste Land ', Berryman set himself enormous problems of theme and form, and overcame them with the vigorous...