I’d propose that we learn better ways of speaking up for and protecting that space, that valley; that we prescribe uselessness as a core nutrient, one we’d surely wilt without. That we write with very fierce love.
Patrick James Dunagan reviews The Heart is Strange: New Selected Poems by John Berryman and John Berryman's Public Vision: Relocating the Scene of Disorder by Philip Coleman today in Rumpus Poetry.