National Book Award in Poetry 1969 Acceptance Speech 3/12/69.
N. Y. National Book Awards, 1969. Berryman’s Acceptance Speech for the National Book Award in Poetry which he received for His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (N. Y.: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1968). A brilliant statement of poetic purpose, independence, and vindication: “Both the writer and the reader of long poems need gall, the outrageous, the intolerable – and they need it again and again. The prospect of ignominious failure must haunt them continually. Whitman, our greatest poet, had all this. Eliot, next, perhaps even greater than Whitman, had it too. Pound makes a marvelous if frail third here. All three dazzlingly original, you notice, and very hostile, both Pound and Eliot, to Whitman. It is no good looking for models. We want anti-models.” National Book Award speeches of this and earlier vintages were printed for the occasion, and in our experience, seldom survive. Very fine copy. Rare. 1 page, 4to, mimeographed.
Price: $150.00