“All Your Ages at the Mercy of My Loves”: Rewriting History in John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet

Since its 1953 publication, John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet has incited debate. The text's dialogue with the first published poet of colonial North America has been described as a factual study, a redaction of adultery and a veiled critique of modern society. It is seldom noted, however, that Berryman's strategy of “modulat[ing]” his voice into Anne Bradstreet's raises key questions regarding his reappropriation of her life and writing. Does Homage's conscious ventriloquism problematize its status as a “historical” poem? And how might this revised understanding illuminate the work's relation to America's origins? This paper proposes a more multifaceted context for Homage's composition than has hitherto been recognized. Through mapping the poem's rewriting of history, I demonstrate it to be the product of both national and literary anxieties: if voicing Bradstreet enables Berryman to interrogate the American Dream's legacy, her canonical status casts scrutiny upon the contemporary poet's role in an age of sociopolitical tensions. Foregrounding Berryman's public self-positioning in Homage invites a reassessment of his engagements with society that liberates his oeuvre from “confessional” designations. As a result, it opens the way for readings that might situate Homage and The Dream Songs within the wider tradition of American epic poetry.