A SHORT LETTER
by John Berryman
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1964). First Edition Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
"To Anne/and to Chis--if, as Kate & I/hope without knowing anything really/about it, you have got together/again. We were bitterly sorry to/hear--from William, not in the least/as gossip--of your separation./Whatever is happening or does,let/me wish you a restoration of the/happiness I so admired in you on/Mr. Frost's last summer./Affectionately/John/The Abbott Hospital/Minneapolis 3,Minn./22 April '64."
The book was published in April 1964 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in May 1965. The recipients--Anne and Chis--are both referred to in Dream Song 38, contained in this volume, a poem about Robert Frost's death. The Abbott Hospital was a place of refuge for Berryman when overwhelmed by his alcoholism. "In hospitals he found his society," Saul Bellow wrote in his introduction to RECOVERY, Berryman's only novel. "University colleagues were often more philistine, less tolerant of poets than were alcoholics or suicidal girls." Cloth a bit faded and lightly spotted. Dustwrapper soiled with small chips at the spine tips. Very Good in a Very Good dustwrapper .
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