[The posthumous collection Henry's Fate] begins with 45 Dream Songs, not necessarily rejected by Berryman but uncollected; they followed on from His Toy, His Dream, His Rest in 1968 and were written "just out of habit", as he admitted. But a habit is not always a mere tic, a mannerism, and many of these are well worth having. They seem in fact to suffer less from mannerism (using the word now of style) than some of the earlier Songs; even allowing for the fact that familiarity has reduced the impression of obscurity in Berryman's work, his crabbed, knotted language and dislocated syntax are here less evident as a barrier to understanding…. Not all of these work; some are merely silly or self-obsessed. But there are some good pieces, including several on his tour of European cities ("my God what visible places".) Assuming that one can take the Dream Songs at all, with their first-person/third-person Henry and their relentless tricksiness, one can well take these.

The remainder of the book is in three sections: finished poems in forms other than that of the 18-line Dream Songs; a few fragments and unfinished poems (interesting to scholars and aficionados but not in themselves very satisfying); and finally a group of poems written at the end of the poet's life when he was once again receiving treatment for his alcoholism. These are agonised and agonising, full of pain; full also, inevitably, of self-pity. But why not? It was natural in the circumstances, and as it is an emotion to which so many of us are subject we may as well have it expressed for us in literature. (pp. 84-5)