Mr. Berryman and Mr. Smith Cross a Bridge

He threw himself off - that's quite a statement. Reading it evokes an image, makes me wonder, was it an action taken during violent struggle - it was either him or me - which could only end in his death? Or was it a sudden and caustic act of defiance, a complete and final rejection? Maybe it was simply grey - a deep and heavy sigh of exhaustion. A final line, long written, he had no choice now but to read aloud.

I don't know why, but they always mention how you went out -when you go out like that - when they write about you poets. There's nothing new about you saying something beautiful, profound, incisive, inflamatory or illuminating and then punching out. There's nothing new about you posing with cigarettes - looking intense, mystical, mad or wise -wearing some eccentric hat in a photograph. I wonder how much that has to do with how you end. I wonder if you are best as the voice crying unseen in the wilderness. I wonder if the capture of that voice on tape, video, the page, in the eyes or ears of another is what begins to do you in.

I sat down to write something while half-thinking about a man named Smith who called himself Berryman. He wrote poetry I've never read and either won or lost a hell of a fight with himself.