The book "Five Young American Poets" had some of his earliest poems alongside other poets like Randall Jarrell. The publisher of this book also published Berryman's first book, "Poems". His next book, "The Dispossessed", was more mature but received mostly bad reviews. When Jarrell reviewed Berryman's book, he wrote that Berryman's poems sounded too much like William Butler Yeats. Berryman later said, "I didn't want to be "like" Yeats; I wanted to "be" Yeats."