PUBLISHED: December 6, 2003
Nearly twenty years after his first submission, Berryman finally published a poem in VQR. No correspondence associated with the submission or acceptance survives, but “How Not to Live” (shortened for publication to “Not to Live”) was most likely written at the suggestion of Charlotte Kohler, who requested poems on Jamestown from dozens of poets. Kohler wrote in the Autumn 1958 issue: “The gathering together of a garland of verse seemed to the Editors of the Virginia Quarterly an appropriate way in which to join in the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement.” Besides Berryman, the remarkable group of fourteen poets who responded, included Marianne Moore, Randall Jarrell, Donald Hall, William Meredith, and Robert Frost (who granted permission to reprint “The Gift Outright,” which had originally appeared in the Spring 1942 issue). Kohler also notes in her introduction that Berryman “completed some revisions on ‘Not to Live: Jamestown, 1957’ just before leaving for India, where he will be for some months.” If there were revisions other than the shortened title, the earlier version no longer remains in the files. However, it is interesting to note that Kohler wrote at the top of the manuscript: “between Engle and Bogardus.” When the garland eventually appeared, Donald Hall’s “Pageant of Jamestown” was inserted between Paul Engle’s “In Flaming Silke” and Berryman’s sonnet.
Manuscripts:
