Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer KnowledgeWhen 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. |
Contents
In the Naked Bed in Platos Cave | 25 |
Far Rockaway | 34 |
Concerning the Synthetic Unity of Apperception | 40 |
A Young Child and His Pregnant Mother | 43 |
Faust in Old Age | 49 |
For the One Who Would Not Take His Life in His Hands | 55 |
2 | 61 |
Dogs Are Shakespearean Children Are Strangers | 68 |
At a Solemn Musick | 147 |
The Fulfillment | 150 |
Summer Knowledge | 157 |
The TrueBlue American | 163 |
6 | 171 |
Sterne | 180 |
The Kingdom of Poetry | 187 |
The World Was Warm and White When I Was Born | 199 |
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me | 74 |
O Mel Make You a Sword of Me | 81 |
Narcissus | 88 |
Pleasure | 92 |
Justice | 103 |
There Was a City | 116 |
Choose | 123 |
He Is a Person | 131 |
All of the Fruits Had Fallen | 205 |
Waken to a Calling | 211 |
During Decembers Death | 217 |
Cupids Chant | 223 |
Abraham | 230 |
Lincoln | 236 |
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