In response to:
Berryman: Tragedy & Comedy Together from the June 4, 2015 issue
To the Editors:
Concerning my “Berryman: Tragedy & Comedy Together” [NYR, June 4], I am grateful to the poet William Logan for informing me that “bones” in John Berryman’s “Mr. Bones” does not refer to dice. He writes:
A small correction: the end men in the minstrel show, called Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones, played the tambourine and bone castanets, respectively. The bones aren’t dice in this instance…. I believe Tambo and Bones were sit-down comics rather than stand-up, though we don’t know as much as we’d like about the actual performances.
Helen Vendler
Cambridge, Massachusetts
