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John Berryman was born in Oklahoma in 1914. He attended Columbia University and Cambridge University. He taught at Wayne State University, Harvard, and Princeton. He was a major figure in the confessional poetry movement. His best-known work is The Dream Songs. He died by suicide in 1972.

Here are some additional details that you may find interesting:

* Berryman was a lifelong alcoholic and struggled with depression.
* He was married three times and had three children.
* He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969 for The Dream Songs.
* He was also a recipient of the Bollingen Prize and the National Book Award.
* His suicide was a major loss to the American literary community.

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.

John Berryman

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