David
C. Berry, Jr. 
Major Works
- Saigon Cemetery, 1972
- Divorce Boxing, 1998
----------------------------------------------------------
David Berry : A Biography
by Megan Few (SHS)
David Chapman Berry, Jr., was born on July 23, 1942, in Vicksburg, Mississippi (Bellande
2) to David and Annette Berry (Berry 1). Berry has a younger
sister, Betty Berry, who was born in 1946. David Berry's family
moved to Greenville, Mississippi, in the late forties or early
fifties, where Berry attended high school and lived at 1443 Highway One
South. David's father managed several gas stations and was a very
humorous man. David's mother, Annette, was pensive and
thoughtful. David's father died around 1984, and his mother
around 1991 (Drew 1).
Berry
says that he began writing poetry in ninth grade due to boredom
in church (Berry 1). In high school, Berry was an excellent
student, who was active in the school chorus and school plays during
his senior year. He graduated from Greenville High School
in June of 1960 and attended Bob Jones University in Greenville, South
Carolina, in the fall of 1960. While in college, Berry
joined the literary fraternity Chi Delta Theta and played intramural
soccer and basketball.
During the summer
vacation, David Berry enjoyed reading, writing, and playing tenor
guitar. He worked at many jobs during college,
including service station manager, survey party rodman,
construction inspector, and towboat deck hand. Berry
graduated from Jones in June of 1964 with a double major in mathematics
and biology (Drew 3). He had also met by this time and planned to
marry Terri Stoutenborough, of Decatur, Illinois, in the summer of
1965. After graduating from Jones, David Berry remained in
Greenville, Mississippi, during the school year of 1964-1965, commuting
to and from Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, studying
pre-med courses and English and creative writing. He also took a
job in the emergency room of Greenville's General Hospital, sparking
an interest in a career in medicine and causing him to apply to
Ole Miss's medical school. However, he decided
to work for General Motors. In the summer of 1965, Berry married
Terri Stoutenborough and moved to Flint, Michigan. During this
time, Berry worked in the General Motors management trainee program. In the Summer of 1966, David Berry was drafted into
the United States Army. During Berry's time in Vietnam, he worked
as a medic, played volleyball, and wrote poetry. Although his
first major work,is called Saigon Cemetery, Berry says that his experiences in Vietnam were not the inspiration for the book of poems. In fact, he says, " I made all that up during lunch breaks before taking a nap. I was in a safe place."
The book was published in 1972 (Bellande 3). He says that he
wrote for two reason: boredom and emotional conflicts in Vietnam
(Berry 1).
David Berry studied at the University of Tennessee after
his return from Vietnam in 1973 (Bellande 3). While
there, he earned a Ph. D. in English. However, he ended up divorcing
Terri. Later he married and then divorced a woman named Anne
as well. Anne and he had a son, David C. Berry III.
In 1985, Berry married Sarah Adele Rawls, from Columbia, Mississippi,
whom he had met at Southern. They later had a son named
Hays, who was born in September of 1986 (Drew 7).
 David Berry wrote the book Jawbone, which was published in 1978 (Bellande 3). His latest literary work is the collection of poetry entitled Divorce Boxing.
Berry has released two editions of this book since 1998 (Bellande
3). He says his inspiration for this book came from his own
personal experience with two divorces (Berry 1).
David Berry has received many distinguished awards in his career.
These include three excellence-in-teaching awards at University
of Southern Mississippi, the Charles Moorman Distinguished Professor
in Humanities award at University of Southern Mississippi (Bellande
3), the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award
in May, 2000, the Florida Review Editor's Prize, and the Southern
Federation of State Arts Agencies Poetry Award (Berry 1).
David Berry is currently working as an English professor at
the University of Southern Mississippi, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
where he is also the poetry editor of the journal
Mississippi Review (Abbott 383). In his spare
time, Berry enjoys sculpting, playing basketball, (Berry 1)
and being a multimedia artist (Bellande 3). When asked
if he plans on writing any more books, Berry's reply is simply,
"Yes." David Berry has one piece of advice for future
writers, "Read, write, and erase" (Berry 1).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Review
of Divorce Boxing
By Megan Few (SHS)
David Berry's book Divorce Boxing is
a compilation of several poems. The book is divided into three
parts: DIVORCED, MARRIED, and DIVORCED. The first section
is a series of poems about various things. Most of these poems
dip into little relationships that Berry experienced after his
divorce. Others are about different occasions and experiences
that Berry had. The second section of the book is called
"Marriage." This section of the book has a sort of different
twist. The poems are more about what led up to the next divorce
and the problems he was experiencing. This section also deals
with the death of Berry's father and the struggle his mother is facing
with cancer. This section of the book tends to be on a more
emotional level. The third section of the book is called
"Divorced." This section is mainly reminiscing about
the second divorce and how it affects every day life. Berry talks
about his ex-wife and about the way that life is surprisingly different
after just having been through a divorce. The poems are
very compelling because you are walked through many of the emotional
events that humans are faced with every day: divorce, death, and
heartache. David Berry's creative language and compelling words embrace
you, and you seem to follow his life through his poetry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An
Interview with David Berry
by Megan Few (SHS)
1. What were your parents' names?
David and Annette Berry
2. Where did you go to high school?
Greenville 
3. What was the main inspiration for your poetry?
Boredom
4. Who is your favorite author?
Barry Hannah
5. Why did you decide to write about divorce?
I'm an expert; I've had two of them.
6. When did you become interested in writing and why?
Ninth grade, in church, I was bored.
7. What kind of student were you in high school?
Average and invisible
8. Do you plan on writing any more books?
Yes
9. Have you received any awards other than excellence in teaching
and the Charles Moorman Distinguished Professor in Humanities award?
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, Poetry Award this past May,
FLORIDA REVIEW Editor's Prize. Southern Federation of State Arts
Agencies, Poetry Award.
10. Do you have any advice for future writers?
Read, write, and erase.
11. Do you have any advice for students today?
Same as above.
12. How has living in Mississippi influenced your writing?
Hasn't, that I know of.
13. Was your experience in Vietnam the influence for Saigon Cemetery?
No, I made all that up during lunch breaks before taking a nap. I was in a safe place.
14. What do you like to do in your spare time?
Play basketball.
Email information from Dan Drew, a friend of David Chapman Berry's since childhood.
From: Dan Drew
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 1:37 AM
To: Megan Few
Subject: David C. Berry...
Here's
one man's history of David Berry, based upon facts that just seem to
stick in my trivia-filled mind; not that Berry is trivial, of course
(ha!).
D. C. Berry (Dr. David Chapman
Berry, Jr.) was born 07-23-42 in Vicksburg, Mississippi to David C.,
Sr. and Annette Berry. David has a younger sister, Betty, who was
born approximately 1946 (since she graduated Greenville High School
school in 1964).
The family moved to
Greenville, Mississippi, either in the late '40s or early '50s, living
at 1443 Highway 1 South. David Sr. managed several gas stations,
and was a quiet but humorous man. Annette was pensive and
thoughtful.
David Sr. died circa 1984 and Annette died circa 1991. Betty
married Leslie Wright in 1964, they have one son, Leslie, Jr., who is
about 30 years old. Leslie and Betty live in Greenville.
David
would have been junior high-age when I first became aware of his
presence. I gauge this based upon the fact that my family began
attending the same church as his in 1954, at which time I was entering
first grade,
and I was born 6 years after David.
In
our church, during the '50s, was a group of "young people"; energetic
teenagers in perpetual motion. Among the names were: David Berry,
Joe Myers, Willard Gowdy, Sandy Johnson, Billy Kahlstorf, David Barnes,
Johnny
Rushin, Butch Kelly, Duke Jones, Billy Smith,
Steve Smith, Gloria Lee, Sarah Burt, Ann Hall, Janice and Judy Rodney,
and several others.
Berry, Gowdy,
Jones, Johnson, Kahlstorf and Barnes were a tight and rowdy
group. I have mental images and recollections of this notorious
gang, which accounted for many gray hairs in heads of church parents:
1)
Between Sunday School and church, on Sunday AM, these guys would
high-tail out of the parking lot in Myers' '38 convertible Dodge, and
go to nearby Pollie Ann Sundries, to buy candy, soda pop, look at
magazines, etc.
They apparently would watch the clock
carefully, making it back just in time to come barrelling into the
sanctuary, then tromping down the north side aisle to their perch in
the front left, just seconds before the service
began.
2)
They would, during church, take their pocketknives and carve pictures
and initials into the yellow paint of the pew in front of them.
Since they worked rather surreptitiously, no one ever actually saw them
carving
anything, but the artwork remained on display as a testament to their diligence, nonetheless.
3)
After church, on Sunday evenings, they would barrel out the rear
sanctuary door, jump into their cars and screech off into the
night. Berry later told me that occasionally, they would take
Gowdy's dad's station wagon
to Myers' dad's taxi cab
garage, pull the muffler off of it, then drive it down to the Monkey
Store, south of Greenville, and race it to the Mississippi River
Bridge, some 7 miles to the west. They would place quarter bets
among themselves to see how fast they could get the station wagon to
travel, before heading back to the garage to reinstall the muffler.
4)
Once (or more than once?) they purchased a package of "Fizzies",
tablets that fizzed with flavor when dropped into a glass of water,
crumpled the tablets and dropped them into the communion tray cups in
church, so that the
cups of grape juice looked like small geysers as the tray was passed among the pews.
In
Greenville High School, Berry was an excellent student, and as a lark,
joined the school chorus his senior year, 1959-1960. Berry was
the policeman in the senior play "Arsenic and Old Lace", and looked
very much
the part, with his dark complexion and heavily bearded face. In high school, Berry drove a black 1950 Ford.
Myers
and Berry graduated high school together, June 1960. Myers should
have graduated a year earlier, but due to non-study, high school
required 5 years out of him. Myers wanted to go to college at Ole
Miss, but his parents decided that he needed more maintenance work,
discipline-wise, and struck a bargain with him: Myers' folks would buy
him a 1960 Chevrolet Impala if he would attend Bob Jones University
(Jones), in Greenville, South
Carolina.
Whether
Berry had done any exploratory work regarding which college to attend,
I do not know, I've never asked him. Having been a diligent
student, he was surely interested in college and it would make sense
that he researched various universities and colleges. In any
event, he followed Myers to Jones, in the fall of 1960.
Both
Berry and Myers became "cool" at Jones. They joined the same
literary fraternity, Chi Delta Theta, played intramural soccer and
basketball (Berry played basketball), began dressing like Ivy Leaguers,
made friends with
students from all over the United
States, taught themselves to play banjo and guitar, took a liking to
folk music and overall gained a college-like exuberance. When
they came home during the summer vacation, they would
speak of two of their closest school buddies, who lived in Ohio, Virgil DeLameter and Pete Ramsay.
During
summer vacation, Berry tirelessly wrote and read, collected and played
folk music albums, played his tenor guitar at hootenannies on Sunday
evenings and spoke longingly of wanting to go back to college and "learn
some
more". He would tell us high schoolers something of what college
and dorm life was like, and it sounded interesting, different and
exciting to us.
During the summers of
1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964, Berry's summer vacation employment consisted
of service station manager, survey party rodman, construction inspector
and towboat deck hand. Berry graduated Jones June 1964, with a
double major in mathematics and biology. He had met and was
engaged to one Terri Stoutenborough, of Decatur, Illinois, and they
planned to marry summer 1965.
After
graduating Jones, Berry remained in Greenville, Mississippi during the
school year 1964-1965, commuting to/from Delta State University in
Cleveland, Mississippi, studying pre-med courses and English/creative
writing. In addition, he took a job in the emergency room of
Greenville's General Hospital, and had his eye on a career in medicine,
thinking briefly of going on to Ole Miss' medical school.
While
he was in town for a year, after having come home from Jones, we high
schoolers took him in as one of us. He would go joy riding with
us, camping with us, he would play guitars and sing folk songs with us,
and he would
converse with us about his reading and
thinking. It seemed as though the required reading he had
incurred in college had triggered a curiosity to pursue further
reading, in various areas. I began to see Berry as a scholar, and
an independent thinker. He was beginning to write letters to the
newspaper editor, on occasion, demonstrating the worthiness of his
opinions.
Berry had begun keeping a
log, or journal, of various experiences, almost as a voyeur of the
human condition, and I noticed what he wrote were chiefly the
impressions that observed phenomena had upon him. It was as though
Berry
had discovered that his life was a canvas, and that he was enjoying
letting the paint of experience hit him, then giving expression of this
in words and opinions. He was becoming a thinker.
One
Sunday evening during the winter of 1964-1965, 3 of us decided to visit
a pentecostal church to see what this particular allegedly hyperactive
denomination actually did during one of their church services.
During the
church service, which involved a lot of
musical performances by the church parishioners, Berry took notes in
his journal, while my friend and I were basically entertained by the
rather active style of worship.
About
this time, Berry had several expressions, which he used quite a bit. He
had picked up the phrase "...played the harlot...", either from the
Bible or Shakespeare, or both; the phrase referring to someone having
been
defrauded or tricked. While fishing, he
would lose his bait and say "Look, I played the harlot with that bass
fish...he took my bait". Another favorite term of his was
"hammer" or "hammerhead", which he generally used
in
reference to men and/or masculine-related matters. Instead of
saying "Yes, that's correct", Berry would say "Char-ray". I've
never been sure what the source of "Char-ray" was, unless it was a
pidgen-French
pronunciation of the word "correct".
 Berry
made a trip to Decatur, Illinois during the summer of 1965,
to see his future bride, Terri. He told us that downtown
Decatur was built around a square and every Sunday afternoon,
the residents of the town would socialize by slowly circling
the square in cars or on bicycle, talking to persons in an adjoining
car, or on another bicycle, for 15 minutes or so, then finding
another car/bicycle and pulling up alongside to do the same
all over again. Berry, being the new guy in town, put on sunshades
and perched leaning against a parking meter. Apparently,
there was a buzz among the residents as to who the new stranger
was, so they began waving at him. Berry got into his beatnik
mode and slowly gave a pope-like wave in return. Someone
loaned Berry a bicycle, so he eventually joined in the social
procession.
To this day, I've always wanted to go to Decatur, just to see the town square that Berry mentioned to us back in 1965.
After
the wedding, Berry and Terri moved to Flint, Michigan, summer 1965, and
bought a 1965 metallic purple Chevrolet Impala, with spinners on the
wheels (very important at that time to Berry). Terri's uncle, or
some
relative, had a job in human resources with
General Motors, and through this connection, Berry got a job in the
General Motors management trainee program. Also, at this time,
Berry's folks moved to Pontiac, Michigan for a
year,
while renting out their Mississippi home. Myers had married, as
well, and lived in nearby Toledo, Ohio, some 100 miles to the south of
Flint, working as an accountant with Houghton Elevator Company.
The Berry and
Myers couples would get together several times to ski, socialize, etc.
Summer
1966, Berry was drafted into the US Army. From what Berry later
told me in 1979, Vietnam had been a good excuse to leave corporate and
regimented General Motors; the Army had made a decision that Berry
would have otherwise been somewhat reluctant to make. David told
me "In the GM management program, we would visit a department for a
while, to learn what that department did, and we would tour various
locations of the plant...for
instance, on a given
morning we might visit a railroad siding and the plant manager would
explain to the trainees 'Every Monday morning, GM loads into rail cars
and ships 10,000 fenders from this warehouse'. I thought: so
what?
That doesn't do my soul any good". His example was such a
succinct representation of his spiritual values and his realization
that true contentment lies not in material possessions.
Accordingly, he probably would not have lasted at GM, even if he had
not been drafted into the Army in 1966.
I
graduated high school June 1966, and had researched several colleges,
one of which was Western Kentucky State University, at Bowling Green,
but my impression of what college life had done to both Myers and Berry
caused me
to follow their example and go to Bob Jones
University. In addition, Jones had a good business school, and
each spring, various corporations and large accounting firms
interviewed the school' s graduating seniors. Plus, it was
during the Vietnam War, so I had to get into some college somewhere and stay put, hoping to evade the draft board.
So,
after arriving at Jones in fall 1966, who should I run into several
weeks later but Berry and wife Terri. The Army had transferred
them to North Carolina, and they had driven down to South Carolina for
the weekend
to visit the Jones campus. Berry
had on his green Army uniform, and looked healthy and fit. He
gave me his address and I believe I wrote him a letter shortly
thereafter. In the spring of 1967, he and Terri and Myers and his
wife
made a visit to the campus and had spotted me playing right field in a
softball game. I heard this incessant cat-calling coming from the
nearby hillside, and finally when they mentioned "right field", I
looked up and
these 4 loons were perched together making fun of my baseball efforts. It was good to see them again.
The
spring of my college sophomore year, I received a letter from San
Francisco, California, with Berry's return address on it. I tore
open the mail, and it was Berry writing me from Cam Rahn Bay in South
Vietnam. I do
not have the letter today, but
remember that it was short in length, and that he said that he was
working as a medic, playing volleyball and writing poetry. I
believe I wrote a reply.
From what I
can piece together, chronologically, I think Berry's one year in
Vietnam was roughly from summer 1967 to summer 1968, since I saw him
spring 1967, and later at Christmas 1968, after he had returned from
Vietnam.
My junior year, during 1968
Christmas holiday vacation back in Greenville, Mississippi, I received
a phone call. The voice said "This is ya daddy...whatcha doing,
hammerhead?". It was Berry, in town from Fort Riley,
Kansas,
where he was stationed, with his wife and almost year old son (David C.
Berry III), visiting sister Betty and their folks. I drove over,
picked him up and we went riding, talking about the Army, Vietnam, rock
and roll,
college, etc. We stopped at a
restaurant out near the Mississippi River bridge and talked for a long
time, then I took him home.
The next
I heard of Berry was summer 1972, when my older sister mentioned her
having talked with Berry's in-laws, at some location or another.
My sister explained to me that Berry was working on a doctorate at
University of Tennessee in Knoxville, sitting in dark rooms writing by
candlelight, and that his marriage had become shaky. I felt a
sense of urgency and a desire to comfort him, and wrote him a letter,
in care of the University of Tennessee's student post office. He
responded, with a brief letter, which I still have, in which he
mentioned that the marriage was "patched up". We exchanged a few
letters, and in one of that series, he mentioned that University of
Georgia had just agreed to publish his first book SAIGON
CEMETERY. A later letter mentioned the possibility of moving to
Mississippi Southern College (before it became a university) to take a
job teaching.
I moved to California
summer 1975, after having graduated Jones 1970, and lived in Atlanta
from 1970 to 1975. I was undergoing a bit of soul-searching and
career restlessness around 1977 and began wondering whatever became of
Berry. I ordered SAIGON CEMETERY from University of Georgia, and
sure enough, they mailed it to me, around 1978. February 1979, I
picked up the telephone in my Los Angeles apartment, and called Berry's
folks in Mississippi. Berry's dad answered and I chatted with him
a while, then asked if he knew where David was. "He's about 10
feet from me", was Mr. Berry's reply. David came on the line, and
we caught up a lot of old news,
promising to
write. He had just gone through a divorce from his second wife, a
lady named Anne, whom he thought a lot of, but who apparently had found
temporal joy in the arms of a rock and roll drummer. He had been
teaching
at University of Southern Mississippi since 1972, he said. It wasn't a
week later that my phone rang and it was Duke Jones. Duke who had
learned of my LA whereabouts via his mother, who lived in
Florida. The
Florida mother had heard of my
whereabouts from her having spoken to one Mrs. Langston. I had
sent a Christmas card to Mrs. Langston's granddaughter who lived in
Rockford, Illinois, and the granddaughter had informed the grandmother
of my w hereabouts. Jones was now living in LA, and working for
the Secret Service, during the Iran shah and hostage crisis. I
explained to Jones how unusual it was to hear from him, since I'd just
phoned Berry a few days prior.
About
this time, Berry wrote Jones and me letters, asking if he could spend
his spring 1979 sabbatical vacationing in California, splitting his
time living with Jones and my wife and me. Are you kidding?
Comeawwwwwwwwwwwwwwn! Within a week, Berry and Jones knock on my
apartment door. I hadn't seen
these guys in 11 years.
Berry
and I had a great time. We drove up to San Francisco for a
weekend of touring art galleries, visiting the wharf, Grace Cathedral,
Golden Gate Park, all the sites, bicycled the beach bike path of LA,
and much more.
We then camped out in
Death Valley one weekend, and on the way home via a 2-lane desert route
stopped in Nipton, California at a restaurant/bar on a Sunday
afternoon. The lady manager asked if we played music. The
bar had microphones, an extra guitar and amplifiers. We looked at
each other and I told Berry to go get his Martin D28 out of the
car. We sat down and played a 1-1/2 hour concert of every song we
could think of, including a rousing version of "Will the Circle be
Unbroken?" as our encore. The lady took a Polaroid photo of us,
and hung it on the wall, along with everyone else who ever performed at
her bar. The photo is no doubt still hanging on the bar's gallery
wall.
About this time, JAWBONE,
Berry's second book of poems had just been published by Thunder City
Press in Birmingham, Alabama, and he left a copy as a gift to my wife
and me, upon his leaving California. I was struck by Berry's
5-week visit, personally. I say this not in a congratulatory mode
or with any ulterior motives. I guess I had not realized how that
for years I had been attempting to conform to others' wishes for my
career and for my opinions. It had been a subtle progression, and
I had been uncomfortable in several areas of my life, feeling as
though I were somewhat a fraud for attempting to live out others'
dreams as though they were mine. I remember Berry answering
several of my questions with a simple "I don't know", and it had an
effect upon me. It made me stop and realize that one doesn't have
to know it all, or strive to know it all; that there is power in
honesty and a sense of release and joy in being able to acknowlege your
own weaknesses and limitations. His simplicity, humility
and honesty were refreshing and educational to me.
I
had begun attempting to write poetry, around this time. My goofy
poems were stretched out in a cute-like manner across the page, but
were not really my own voice. I would send them to Berry, and he
would red-ink them. He then told me: "Just write your letters".
What he was telling me was that my natural voice is found in prose and
letters. That was a discovery for me: I had never thought of
poetry, letters, prose, fiction, non-fiction, plays, etc., as being
spokes off the same wheel, and the point of the wheel was to convey an
experience to the reader in the most honest manner. Wow! This
discovery increased my sense of individuality, and I began to
appreciate not only the works of authors, but their letters and
biographies as well. The point of all art and literature, became,
at least for me, a sharing of the human experience and condition.
About
this time, Berry and I were reading Walker Percy, particularly THE
MOVIEGOER. I deeply enjoyed this book, as well as reading Ernest
Hemingway's letters, which Berry had recommended to me.
After
undergoing a separation/divorce in September 1984, I felt that the
lessons I had learned from Berry, literature, art, etc., had allowed me
the strength to "play with life" a bit, in order to make it through the
tough
times. What I discovered was how
universal the subjects of pain and suffering are, on all levels, in
this life, and that my little separation/divorce was just a small piece
of the greater toil and struggle of our existence as people. If
I'd not encountered such truths earlier, I'm quite sure my divorce
would have shattered me.
I remember
calling Berry the day after my wife left. He later wrote and
included the line "Be easy with life; it's trying". Immediately,
I saw the word "trying" as both a verb and an adjective, making it a
pun. Berry said
he'd never thought of the word
as having two uses. Goes to show you that if you work at
literature, sometimes it just flows out of you, and you don't even
realize what's going on!
I visited
Berry Christmas 1984 and again 1985, while in the South. In 1985,
he married Sarah Adele Rawls (Saradel), from Columbia, Mississippi, an
artmajor he met at Southern. Their son Hays was born September
1986.
In 1992, I flew to New Orleans,
rented a car and attempted to surprise Berry by just showing up at his
house, but his wife had tipped him off that I was coming. During
my few days there, we cleared the trees and brush from a
plot
of recently purchased raw land, beside a creek, north of Hattiesburg,
on which he intended to move a prefabricated storage shed in order to
live in several days per week, in lieu of commuting to Ocean Springs,
where he and the family had recently moved, upon selling their
Hattiesburg home (would you like to diagram THIS sentence?!!). I
said "Guru, you know what this place reminds me of?: Jim Jones and
Jonestown (religious cult that built a camp in the jungles of Guyana
and ended up committing suicide in 1980)". Since then, I refer to
his Hattiesburg hut as "Little Jonestown". I think Berry prefers to
think of it as a second coming of Thoreau's Walden
Pond, but Thoreau only lived in his shack for a year, I believe, whereas Berry's been in Jonestown now for 8 years.
From
a literary standpoint, it seems to me that Berry enjoys the
juxtaposition of phrases and concepts taken out of context, which is
sort of what a metaphor does all the time. For instance, when I
was undergoing a divorce, he was trying to cheer me up and help me take
notice of my new freedom, by saying "Son...a breakup is a break UP"
(emphasis on "up", meaning optimism, etc.). To see a clearing in
the woods, which he intended to situate temporal living quarters, and
to hear someone make such a savage and gruesome reference to it as
"Little Jonestown" is another example that he digs. I've seen him
compare several times, in his writing, Joseph Conrad's Captain Ahab
with the cartoon character Popeye, which is an example of using the
ridiculous (cartoon) to demonstrate the profound (Conrad's classic
tale). As Berry often says, "Tension gets attention". I
added what
I refer to as "Drew's extensions" to this quote: "Traction gets attraction and motion gets emotion".
As
a painter, I understand that. A good painting contrasts dark and
light (referred to as "values"); a weak painting melds lukewarm darks
and lights and doesn't hold the viewer's interest. Same goes for
writing.
A good writer SHOWS instead
of tells. Berry is always searching for ways to show with images
and metaphors a simple observation.
I
frankly think that his everyday speech is more poetic than any of his
poetry. When we took a broken ceiling fan, which almost fell on
me while sleeping in his home, to the hardware store to be repaired, he
had several humorous and truthful observations to make of that
ordeal. But if he wrote what he spoke, it wouldn't be poetry;
it's be prose.
To me, a central
feature of poetry (versus prose) is the minimizing of communication as
tightly as possible into the fewest words and phrases, so that every
syllable is critical to conveying the story. But...maybe I'm
wrong.
Megan, I hope this
helps. If you need anything else, let me know. I'll fire
off a cartoon of "th' doctor" by this weekend, OK?
Regards, Dan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Websites
This
is a helpful web site from Ole Miss with biographical information.
Materials
pertaining to the writings of USM English professor and poet,
Dr. David C. Berry, Jr. The collection includes correspondence,
manuscript materials at The University of Southern Mississippi
Libraries Special Collections.
Famous
Poets web site has biography of D. C. Berry.
Eastern
Washington University Press has Divorce Boxing
by Berry
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography
- Abbott, Dorothy, ed. Reflections of Childhood and Youth: Mississippi Writers: Poetry. Volume III. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi; 1988. 26-28.
-
"Faculty profile: David Berry." The Center For Writers.
[Online] Available
http://sushi.st.usm.edu/mrw/center/fac-dcb.htm
-
Bellande, Ray L. Ocean Springs Writers. [Online]
Available email:<nrj1@ra.msstate.edu>.
<rbell@datasync.com>.
- Berry, D. C. Divorce Boxing. Cheney, Washington: Eastern Washington University Press, 1998.
- Berry, David. Berry. [Online] Available email: megal420@hotmail.com from David3berry@aol.com.
- Lucas, Sherry. "Institute of Arts and Letters Recognizes Talent in State." The Clarion-Ledger. 30 April, 2000. 10G.
- Drew, Dan. David C. Berry. [Online] Available email:megal420@hotmail.com from DANFDREW@email.msn.com.
--------------------------------------------------------
|
