The Dream Songs are distracting and distractions. They are His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, as Berryman indicates in the title of the second volume of poems which, together with 77 Dream Songs, form the long work. [In addition to refusing to yield what they are about, Berryman's poems] are distracting in other regards as well, especially in the insistence and self-consciousness from which they proceed. The 385 poems, or songs, draw attention to themselves in every possible way: by their sheer number, by their language, by their range in knowledge, thinking and feeling, and style. The poems build toward an elliptical long poem that seems unwilling to end…. Through the voices assumed in the poems, the poet becomes his own public relations man, as well as a man at the mercy of the public relations of literary reputations. Berryman, who in life could manage a loud speaking voice, finds...