CONFESSIONAL

Question 1

JB resemblance

Answer 1

‘There is a fiendish resemblance between Henry and me’

Question 2

What does Dream Songs do?

Answer 2

Terrify & comfort simultaneously

Question 3

Who is the persona of the poems?

Answer 3

Henry pussy-cat: ambiguous pronoun, poet both left out and put in the poem

Question 4

Like Berryman Henry is..

Answer 4

A poet, a teacher, drinker whose father shot himself when he was 12 y/o

Question 5

Henry’s exaggerated self pity & fears undercut by the friend’s practical response to suffering

Answer 5

‘Mr Bones, we all brutes & fools

Mr bones, you a clown’

Question 6

The fall in dream songs

Answer 6

‘All the world like a woolen lover
Once did sen on Henry’s side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.’

Question 7

What is the terror of the dream songs?

Answer 7

The fear of total separation, of never being able to be oneself, for one can only know oneself in relation to another