"These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. / They are only meant to terrify & comfort," John Berryman wrote in his 366th Dream Song. And understood many have not been. Packed with private jokes, topical and literary allusions …, they boggle many minds…. The situation was considerably beclouded when, four years [after the first 77 Dream Songs were published in 1964,] Berryman dumped on the world a truckful of 308 additional Dream Songs, under the title His Toy, His Dream, His Rest.

This latter title could apply to all the Dream Songs. At once Berryman's plaything, hope for immortality, and major achievement, after which he could repose, the cycle consists of 385 impossible dialogues by Berryman with his possible selves. Daydreaming and nightmaring on the printed page, Berryman broke from his earlier, academic, Audenesque verse into confessions of over-drinking, over-smoking, over-sexing, pill-popping, whathaveyou. That these poems are confessions is undeniable—though Berryman...