Paul Mariani Books

Robert Lowell has always seemed to me to be just out of reach. I was too young to witness his poetry readings to the Washington crowds protesting the war in Vietnam. By the time I was set "Skunk Hour" in my final year of secondary schooling, Lowell had been dead for a half dozen years. Based on Lowell's letters, poetry and critism and of those who knew him; this work is an exhaustive and comprehensive account of the poet's priveliged and frequently turbulent life. His three marriages are discussed, as are his spell in jail,( as a Conscientious Objector)and his numerous admissions to psychiatric hospital due to manic depression. From his aristocratic but dysfunctional childhood to his last years, the reader is made aware of Lowell's progression and prowess as a poet. Of fascination too is his interactions with other great poets, most notably Frost, Pound and Eliot; the latter described as 'The Master', a mantle passed to Lowell on Eliot's death. "Lost Puritan" is illuminating and revealing, it will bring Lowell into reach for anyone who is an afficianado of his poetry. A scholarly salute to the greatest poet of the second half of the twentieth century.

Robert Lowell is condidered one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century; some rank him second only to Frost. His poetry, always extremely personal and frank, and displaying great technical skill (he wrote in strict classical forms; only late in life did he write in free verse), was highly praised and prized: he won three Pulitzers. A Catholic convert, later an agnostic, he wrestled mightily with the Creator in his work. He suffered 8 nervous breakdowns during his life and was married three times. During the 1960s, he was a visible participant in the anti-war movement. Mariani is an excellent writer himself and tells Lowell's life story, from the successes to the heartbreaks, interestingly and well.

I like pauls writing style, its smooth and easy reading. I enjoyed it. However it does show what can happen when a person becomes overly obsessed with religion and doing the right thing 100% of the time. If the writer does something wrong by another person he seems to feel the need to immediately pray for an hour to rid himself of the guilt and then keep himself awake all night worrying over whether he has prayed enough for god to forgive him. I think the message god gave me after reading the book was,

"Be a good person michael but dont drop down in front of me every 5 minutes, you know you did something wrong and so do I, get over it buddy and try not to do it again"

Paul Mariani, a writer and English professor at Boston College, completed a thirty day retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. His journal reflections from this retreat are the basis of the book's content. For those who are familiar with the spirituality of St. Ignatius, as well as those who have completed the thirty day retreat or variations of this retreat, the book will be of great value.

The book has many strong points. The first has to be Mariani's openness to what the retreat may have to offer and his willingness to share what he has experienced while completing the retreat. His observations are a combination of poetry, theology, and a keen insight into himself. He freely draws upon times when the Lord has worked in his life as well as moments where he has blocked God's work. He is painfully honest in the book, freely sharing his love and admiration of his wife Eileen, who has not joined him for the retreat. He also shares intimate moments in his life, including the time when he left his wife and three sons which nearly destroyed his marriage. His book is honest, but not confessional which gives it a bit of an advantage over a standard memoir. The reader does not see just a person who has made mistakes, (or as Mariani openly admits, a sinner), but a person who allows himself to be an instrument through which God's grace flows and transforms.

People who have been on retreat at Eastern Point in Gloucester will instantly find themselves back at this powerful retreat house simply by reading the pages. Mariani writes descriptively about the retreat house and its beautiful natural surroundings. I usually make an annual retreat at Eastern Point but was unable to do so this past year, In many ways Mariani's sharing of his experiences as well as the atmosphere allowed me to take a vicarious retreat as I anxiously await the opportunity to make a retreat in Gloucester early in the new year. This book is destined to become a classic for those who love Ignatian spirituality. Fans of spiritual writer and poet Kathleen Norris may also enjoy this book. Like Norris, Mariani is also a poet as well as a scholar and biographer of poets. The spirituality of both Mariani and Norris permeates their writings and lives, and as poets perhaps they help us too see God in a vibrant and creative way that often eludes some great theologians.

I was very much impressed with this book on two levels. The writing is superb. Mr. Mariani has a wonderful, colorful, textured style of writing that adds beauty to what was already a wonderful topic. Boston College should be honored to have him on board. The spiritual content of the book based on the exercises of St. Ignatius is deeply powerful and only for the serious seeker of faith and service to God. The combination of the writing and the spiritual search make this book hard to put down once the first page is read.

Paul Mariani's personal journey is powerful and compelling. While he shares with us his discoveries and reflections on evils committed in his life, he also is unabashed in his joyous sharing of God's revelations to him.

Some of this reads like an unabridged prayer journal, and some has clearly been reworked after the fact. Regardless, Mr. Mariani has a gift for words, and he tells a great story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

My only caveat is that this is Mr. Mariani's journey, not yours. Remember that what was revealed to him during the 30 days may not be pertinent to his readers.

Overall, it's an inspiration. I heartily recommend it.

I add this to my "favorites" bookshelf - until I read this, I believed Henri Nouwen's GENESEE DIARY would always remain my favorite, a book I reread every few years, as I think it captures the humaness of our spiritual search and growth, with all the inherent pitfalls and break-throughs. This book has inspired me even to the point that I too am now considering making the 30 day retreat - that is if I ever can resolve to do the necessary work such an adventure requires. I recommend it highly - and plan on rereading it soon, only this time, I will read the prescribed scriptures as Mariani did as he progressed through the retreat.

When Mariani gets deep into discussion of particular poems, his language often becomes so compressed and allusive that it reads like a diary of Mariani's own history with Crane's poetry. And like many diaries, it is simply not understandable to an outsider.

I expect that Mariani does not want to reduce the richness and complexity of Crane's work, and this is admirable. I also think that perhaps he expects his readers to have read at least one of the earlier biographies of Crane. And perhaps an English Ph.D. would follow more of Mariani's un-explicated allusions than I did (though I have done some graduate work in English). But I was often frustrated by this book, because while Mariani clearly knows a great deal about Crane's work and its literary and biographical contexts, he often fails to explain what he knows in a way that can be understood.

I had read the author's biography of John Berryman and enjoyed it, although I never could find the house Berryman was to have lived in when he taught at the University of Cincinnati. This biography was also very enjoyable and despite Crane's alcoholic behavior and excuse-making I was able to feel sorry for him. But there were a few "facts" reported that can't be right - H.P. Lovecraft a Cleveland native! And Harry Crosby was 7 years younger than his wife, not older. Crosby was in his early 30's when he died, he wasn't 40 years old when he met Crane. Minor, I know but they cause me to wonder - is anything else wrong?

An extremely well written biography of Hart Crane, America's first great modern poet, recreates a fascinating time in the US when the artists of New York lived in cold water flats and drank prohibition liquor (Crane seems to have drank the most). The author deals with Crane's homosexuality as an integral part of his art (as it should be) which apparently has not been the case up until now. My only complaint is that there is too much made up dialogue between Crane and his friends. After awhile you begin to feel you have entered the land of fiction instead of biography. The author presents Crane's horrible relationship with his tyrannical father as the cause of much of his short life's misery.

I arrived at Mariani's 1999 biography after first revisiting his subject's poetry in THE COMPLETE POEMS OF HART CRANE (2000). As a literature student in college, I sometimes confused Hart Crane (1899-1932) with Stephen Crane (1871-1900), the author of THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (1895). After reading Mariani's memorable biography, however, I doubt that I'll ever confuse the Cranes again.

Crane's life, Mariani observes, is "the stuff of myth" (p. 424). Crane lived in a "broken world," and was haunted with demons throughout his short life. He was the child of a troubled marriage, and spent "twenty-five years . . . quibbling" with his parents incessantly (p. 324), before being rejected by his "hysterical" and "nagging" mother (p. 301). Along the way to his rise as a poet in his twenties, Crane was a "slave" to one miserable job after the next (p. 67), and a voracious reader (p. 62). Mariani's book follows Crane, struggling with his writing, and "living the life of the roaring boy, drinking nightly and cruising the Brooklyn and Hoboken docks after sailors, only to jump from a ship at the age of thirty-two" (p. 424).

Eugene O'Neill, E. E. Cummings, Charlie Chaplin, Garcia Lorca, and William Carlos Williams make appearances in Crane's biography, and there are "shadows," too, in the "broken tower" of his life--Blake, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Hopkins, and "Brother Whitman."

Crane's poetry is not easy, but worth the effort, and this fascinating examination of Crane's writing in the context of his troubled life is revealing.

G. Merritt

In a short, wild, and mostly unhappy life, Harold Hart Crane (1899-1932) became -- Hart Crane -- a major figure in 20th Century American poetry whose reputation has grown with time. His life became the stuff of legend. Hart Crane left an unhappy home at the age of 17 to live in New York City and follow his dream to become a poet. Without any formal education -- he did not finish high school -- he used his inborn gifts and wide reading to quickly become important to New York's literary culture and community. His first book, White Buildings, is a collection of short, difficult imagistic poetry. His second book, The Bridge, is a lengthy poem offering a mystic, highly personal account of America, its past and its future, using the Brooklyn Bridge is its chief symbol.

Crane's life was one of excess. From late adolesence, Crane drank heavily. He spent a great deal of time in underworld sex picking up sailors in the harbors of New York, all the while trying to conceal his sexual identity from his parents. Towards the end of his life, his behavior grew increasingly violent and self-destructive. He was jailed on several occasions in New York, Paris, and Mexico. Near the end, he did have what seems to be his only heterosexual relationship with Peggy Cowley, the divorced wife of the critic and publisher, Malcolm Cowley. Crane committed suicide when he returned with Peggy Cowley from Mexico in 1932 by jumping off the deck of a ship. He was all of 32.

Published in 1999, Mariani's biography commenmorates the Centennial of Crane's birth. It gives a good detailed account Crane's life. The poetic focus of the book is The Bridge. (some critics see White Buildings as the stronger, more representative part of Crane's work.) Mariani shows how Crane conceived the idea of his long poem and how he worked on it fitfully over many years. He also shows the difficulty Crane had in completing the work at all -- given his alcoholism. sexual promiscuity, difficulty in supporting himself, and bad relationship with his separated parents. But complete the work Crane did. It presents a mythic, multi-formed vision of the United States stretching from the Indians to our day of technology. There is much to be gained from this poem. I have loved it for many years and Mariani's discussion of the poem and its lenghty creation is illuminating.

Crane was a romantic in his life and art. Frequently, Mariani refers to him as the "last romantic", but this is an overstatement. I was reminded both by Crane's dissolute life and by his work of the beats -- particularly of Kerouac -- and the vision of America that they tried to articulate. With a Whitman-type vision of a mystical America encompassing all, the beats share and expand upon the romanticism of Hart Crane.

Mariani's book covers well Crane's tortured relationship with his parents. It includes great discussions of literary New York City and of Crane's friends. It shows well how Crane was captivated by New York. We see Crane going back and forth between Clevland, New York, Paris, Mexico and Hollywood in a short overreaching life. But most importantly, we see the creation and legacy of a poet. Mariani does well in describing the poems and in reading these difficult texts in conjunction with the poet's life and thought.

Crane's literary output was not extensive. Several of his poems are part of the treasures of American literature. These poems include, for me, "Voyages" (a six-part love poem from the White Buildings collection), "At Melville's Tomb" and other lyrics from White Buildings, The Broken Tower, Crane's final poem, and, of course The Bridge.

Mariani gives a good account of Crane. As with any biography of this type it is not definitive. I hope it will encourage the reader to explore and reflect upon Crane's poetry and achievement.

From the opening line that Berryman/Smith was 12 (he was 11) when his father committed suicide (doubtful, very doubtful) to the hyped up suicide-of-the-American poet, Mariani portays Berryman's life as a kind of cartoon. Mariani did not go to Oklahoma, where Berryman grew up to age 11, or to Florida where his father (supposedly) committed suicide. His research and documentation are not only suspect but also flat shallow.

I didn't know much about John Berryman despite being an English major in college. However, I ran across a magazine article about Paul Mariani and the series of biogrphies he wrote on American poets. It intrigued me enough to pick up Dream Song. All I can say is "WOW!!"
Mariani brings Berryman to life and what a life Berryman had. Yes, Berryman was self destructive but he was also brilliant. Mariani tells the story in such a poignant way that I found myself looking forward each night to the time I could spend reading this book.
If you like biographies, especially literary biographies, then treat yourself to this book. You might also read Mariani's other books. I read his book about Robert Lowell and that was well done. However, Berryman is my favorite of the two.

A good recount of all the pain (much of it self-induced) Berryman went through to be able to find the voice that emerged in the Dream Songs. His childhood, parents, education, heroes, friends, addictions...all of them given appropriate weight in this biography. If you like his poetry, you'll like this book.

His father, cuckolded and bankrupt, shot himself under his son's bedroom window.

His mother, who could maybe spell the word "No," married the paramour.

The paramour adopted the boy. He went from being John Allyn Smith to John Berryman. The kid had his identity taken away before he was in his teens. "John Berryman" was one of the great literary fictions of the 20th century. There WAS no John Berryman--there was someone using that name and forever in search of an identity born in pain and betrayal.

It led him to womanizing...not at all curious given his stepfather's and his mother's histories...to an hysterical disposition...and ultimately--or really for years--into incipient and then full-blown alcoholism.

Berryman jumped off that bridge on January 7, 1972, but he died of drinking. He'd been through detoxes and rehabs but he could never figure out how to stay sober. The compulsion was too strong. Ultimately, I suspect, it was his weapon of choice in a lifelong suicide attempt. The bridge simply ended the quest.

Mariani's book isn't just worth having, it's indispensible to understanding Berryman's work: unless you're one of those New Critical purists (are there any left?) who exclude biography from the study of literary production. There isn't much to say about it except it never bores the reader. Alcoholics are notoriously boring and dull people who repeat the same asininities over and over, but Mariani draws us into Berryman's inner life and shows us as well the effect he had on the people around him. It was not always negative...but when it was, it was appalling.

He also, by the way, shows us a great and difficult poet, not just a horse's ass with a gift for getting into trouble. Mariani's description of how Berryman composed "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet" is worth the price of the ticket.