Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge

by Delmore Schwartz

When this book was first published (as Summer Knowledge) in 1959.
Delmore Schwartz was still riding a crest, the golden boy of the literary scene—a position he had commanded ever since the appearance of his first collection of stories and poems in 1938. Summer Knowledge won for him both the prestigious Bollingen Prize in Poetry and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award. lronically, indeed tragically, the praise and prizes Schwartz's poems received did not forestall his decline, and this, his poetic testament, proved to be a final one as well. Overcome by mental illness, alienated from his friends and supporters, he disappeared from the literary scene, in the end to die in 1966 in an obscure Broadway hotel. The tragedy of his life pales before the triumph of his art and craft. Selected Poems clearly places him among the foremost poets of his generation.

Genres: Poetry, American, 20th Century, Fiction, The United States Of America

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Delmore Schwartz was born December 8, 1913, in Brooklyn. The marriage of his parents Harry and Rose, both Roumanian immigrants, was doomed to fail. Sadly, this misfortune with relationships was also a theme in Schwartz's life. His alcoholism, frequent use of barbiturates and amphetamines, and battles with various mental diseases, proved adverse in his relationships with women. His first marriage to Gertrude Buckman lasted six years; his second, to the young novelist Elizabeth Pollett, ended after his ceaseless paranoid accusations of adultery led him to attack an art critic with whom he believed Elizabeth was having an affair.

Despite his turbulent and unsettling home life as a child, Schwartz was a gifted and intellectual young student. He enrolled early at Columbia University, and also studied at the University of Wisconsin, eventually receiving his bachelor's degree in 1935 in philosophy from New York University. In 1936 he won the Bowdoin Prize in the Humanities for his essay "Poetry as Imitation." In 1937 his short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" (successfully written in one month during the summer of 1935 after he locked himself in his Greenwich Village apartment) was published in Partisan Review, a left-wing magazine of American politics and culture; the following year this short story would be published by New Directions with other poetry and prose in his first book-length work, also titled In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. It was praised by many, including T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, and Vladimir Nabokov.

He never finished his advanced degree in philosophy at Harvard, but was hired as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer, and later given an Assistant Professorship. Frustrated by what he believed was a sense of anti-Semitism within the school, in 1947 Schwartz ended his twelve-year association with Harvard and returned to New York City. His book of short stories The World is a Wedding was published the following year. Time compared Schwartz to Stendhal and Anton Chekhov. By this same time his work was widely anthologized. He was publishing critical essays on other important literary figures and cultural topics, and was the poetry editor at Partisan Review, and later also at New Republic.

His increasingly itinerant nature left him dependent on a series of teaching positions at Bennington College, Kenyon College, Princeton University, the writer's colony Yaddo, and at Syracuse University, in his last years. Among others, he inspired the student Lou Reed, who later dedicated "European Son" on the Velvet Underground's first album to Schwartz. In 1960 Schwartz became the youngest poet ever to win the Bollingen Prize. His friend Saul Bellow wrote a semi-fictional memoir about Schwartz called Humboldt's Gift, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

The last years of his life Schwartz was a solitary, disheveled figure in New York. He drank frequently at the White Horse Tavern, and spent his time sitting in parks and collecting bits of work, quotes, and translations in his journal. Finding himself penniless and virtually friendless, in the summer of 1966 Schwartz checked into the Times Squares hotel, perhaps to focus on his writing. Unfortunately by this time his body had been taxed by years of drug and alcohol abuse. He worked continuously until a heart attack on July 11 seized him in the lobby of the hotel.

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Source: poets.org

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

This collection is anchored by a multi-act treatment of Coriolanus, offering a richer approach than the one offered by the Bard. Schwartz identifies with the Roman general, his distrust of pomp and ceremony and his disdain for the caprice of Das Man. Interestingly Scwartz uses Beethoven (both to himself and Coriolanus) as a double and looks to the composer during interludes. I found this to be an amazing accomplishment. There is a roundness of self and an irritating trace of vanity which can't be effaced or outpaced.

I never felt a lapse amongst these 240 pages. Each image was sincere and if not robust at least it wasn't fashionable dross. The two late poems Baudelaire and Lincoln will remain fixed in my verse-view as exemplars.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found out about this guy as a reference point of Lou Reed.

I dug into the book and was hooked for life.

This guy wrote so beautifully, it's almost everyday speech with some modernism and assorted philosophy thrown in for kicks.

Very underrated and goes sadly unappreciated for most people.

Check out a piece I did on him: http://hansonmatthew.com/Site/Flak_De...

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone should read "The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me," which I take to be Schawrtz' most well-known and most meritorious poem. The rest of his work is well-crafted and pretty strong, but more or less forgettable-- I'm not surprised that he doesn't show up more in classes. He's kind of like a more sedate, less mysterious and more pun-loving version of Eliot-- modernism lite (sic).
While that sounds unaccountably harsh, I'd also like to point out that if you like Eliot or the idea of modernism lite (sic), this is an enjoyable yet challenging guy to familiarize oneself with.

[Àlvar · Rating 2 out of 5]

What most attracted me to Schwartz’s first collection of short stories initially and the reason why I decided to check out his poetry was the way his concise writing tackled and examined an experience I thought of as quintessentially American (more so New Yorker) and hence unique. Themes of family relationships, migration, estrangement, Jewishness, cultural heritage and urban schmooze are also present here but become less frequent and more concealed in the later poems, that to me was a bit of a let-down. Indeed most of the lines I liked were scrunched in the first, and I believe earliest, chapters of the book.

Here are some poems I liked:
1) The Ballad of the Children of the Czar / Father and Son / Someone is Harshly Coughing as Before / Concerning the Synthetic Unity of Appreception / Parlez-Vous Français? / By Circumstances Fed / A Young Child and His Pregnant Mother / Prothalamion / What Is To Be Given - 2) All of Us Always Turning Away for Solace / Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day / Dogs Are Shakespearean… / Do the Others Speak of Me Mockingly, Maliciously? / The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me - 4) Darkling Summer, Ominous Dusk… / The Fulfillment / Summer Knowledge – 5) The True-Blue American / The Would-Be Hungarian / Is It the Morning… / A Small Score – 6) Baudelaire / The Kingdom of Poetry – 7) The Dark and Falling Summer / I Did Not Know the Spoils of Joy / During December’s Death.

There are some very good passages here, however the collection as a whole does not let them shine, it feels at times needlessly packed and stodgy. I would personally read some of his most famous poetry on the net and then refer to T. S. Eliot. Maybe I’ll revisit this in a couple of years.

2.25/5.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

To live between terms, to live where death
Has his loud picture in the subway ride,
Being amid six million souls, their breath
An empty song suppressed on every side,
Where the sliding auto's catastrophe
Is a gust past the curb, where numb and high
The office building rises to its tyranny,
Is our anguished diminution until we die.

Whence, if ever, shall come the actuality
Of a voice speaking the mind's knowing,
The sunlight bright on the green windowshade,
And the self articulate, affectional, and flowing,
Ease, warmth, light, the utter showing,
When in the white bed all things are made.

[Mirror · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressingly only really comes together in the final section, though "Coriolanus" is near-brilliant. Nigh-indispensable for folks finding their voice, though, I hope.

[Robert Walkley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of Delmore (thanks in part to James Atlas’ exquisite biography ) often takes precedence over his poetry. He is the mad poet who burned brightly for a little while but never rose up to achieve his promise. (Berryman wrote about Schwartz achingly and tenderly in the Dream Songs). But the poetry that Delmore created is wonderful and original and seems equal to that of many of his contemporaries. I especially like “The Ballad of the Children of the Czar” and “Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon along the Seine.”

[Scott Weyandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Gifts and Choices! All men are masked,
And we are clowns who think to choose our faces
…
And the past is immortal, the future is inexhaustible!”

from All Clowns Are Masked and All Personae

[Leila Arten · Rating 5 out of 5]

adore

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Peter Rowe]

Okay

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

" Time is the school we learn , Time is the fire we burn "
Delmore Schwartz

[Andrew Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

We would not have Lou Reed without Delmore Schwartz, and for that I am eternally grateful. This man's prose is meditative and dreamlike, but altogether it is unhinged beneath that surface. Sometimes it is hard to follow, but it is worth chewing on.

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1938 twenty-five-year-old Delmore Schwartz burst like a meteor upon the American literary scene with the publication of his first book, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. This collection of short stories and poems was well received and garnered praise from the likes of T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Schwartz was thought to be one of the most promising young writers of his generation. Unfortunately, also like a meteor, Schwartz’s success was short-lived. He was unable to follow up on his early achievements. As a result of alcoholism and mental illness, he spent his last years as a recluse. He died on July 11, 1966, at age 52, of a heart attack. His relative obscurity should in no way diminish his talent as a writer. Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge was published in 1959 and was his selection of poetic works from 1938-1958. I was impressed by his imagery, much of it being allusions to nature as well as urban life. Many of his poems are philosophical without being obscure or pedantic. One of my favorite pieces is a five-act parody of Shakespeare called “Coriolanus and His Mother.” which includes prose pieces between each act. Some of my other favorites are odic tributes to Baudelaire, Shakespeare, Vivaldi, Sterne, Swift, among others. If you think you might want to try Delmore Schwartz, I would recommend In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories rather than Selected Poems.

[Simonbudwake · Rating 5 out of 5]

The section Coriolanus and his Mother makes me want to go to graduate school, to better delve into the depths of that poem. Every few months I either revisit the poem or the Shakespeare play its based on and am further enlightened and further mystified.

The shorter lyrics in the first two segments of the book are also terrific. Especially the 2nd section, the fugues. "A dog named ego the snowflakes as kisses" is both a stunning examination of the nature of the mind, and a portrait of a simple scene. Often I've walked my dog and while there is a light snowfall and the poem is recalled, perfectly fitting the moment.

The last two sections of the book are less strong, but there are some lovely little poems in there.

This book as a whole has totally altered my intellectual landscape, and I'm very happy for it.

[Mauberley]

Recently, the Poetry Foundation selected 'The True-Blue American' as its poem of the day and that sent me back to this book which I hadn't looked at for about 35 years. Our reunion was wonderful. The author marvelled at my greying hair and found myself less impressed by his philosophizing but deeply struck by his meditations on time and the sense of loss that shades so many of his poems. I believe that Bellow based Von Humboldt Fletcher on Schwartz and it might be time to re-visit that book as well.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though Schwartz’s poetry is often incomprehensibly solipsistic, this collection contains several perceptive, philosophical ruminations of a philosophical bent, the expression of a soul too sensitive for the brutish, inscrutable world that the poet so desperately tries to decipher.

Favorite Poems:
“In the Naked Bed, in Plato’s Cave”
“By Circumstances Fed”
“For the One Who Would Take Man’s Life in His Hands”
“The Heavy Bear Goes with Me”
“The Kingdom of Poetry”
“May’s Truth and May’s Falsehood”
“Once and for All”
“Psyche Pleads with Cupid”
“The Mind Is and Ancient and Famous Capital”

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Berryman described Schwartz as 'the most underrated poet of the twentieth century', and this selection is testament to his claim. Impossible to do it justice in a short review, but the poems are challenging, often philosophical, and the kind that yield up more and more every time you read them. The later poems, in the second half of the book, have generally been critically rubbished, but I believe they represent a different, celebratory aspect to Schwartz: they are best read aloud.

[Fred R · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poem in which he sits down and watches a performance of Coriolanus while Marx, Aristotle, Beethoven, and Freud discuss the action is to me genius, and more than makes up for most of the rest of the book.

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey Schwartz: I love to love you, baby.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear the Ace of Spades." I was lucky enough to stumble upon Schwartz while in university, and he is still one of my favorite poets.

[Tracy]

Lou Reed got me here