Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge

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Back cover: "In July of 1966 the New York literary community was shocked to learn that a heart-attack victim found in a Broadway hotel had been identified as the poet Delmore Schwartz. It was a tragic story. From the appearance of his first book of poems and stores, _In Dreams Begin Responsibilities_, in 1938, Schwartz had been the golden boy, a young culture-hero, of the liberal intellectuals. A series of remarkable books - the autobiographical _Genesis_, the play _Shenandoah_, the stories of _The World Is A Wedding_, and others - confirmed his reputation. Then a cruel mental illness took hold which wrecked his academic career and alienated him from the friends who tried in vain to help. A poet must be judged by his work, not the circumstances of his life. As this selection from his earlier books which he made himself and published in 1959 as _Summer Knowledge_ clearly demonstrates, Delmore Schwartz's secure position among the foremost poets of his generation. But, in a dramatic way - and it was always one of the touchstones of his art that he could dramatize ideas in poetry as few others could - the tragedy of his later life and lonely death are inseparable from his work. Like some tormented figure in a myth, Delmore Schwartz acted out in his life, as he wrote of it in poems and stories, the alienation of the poet from our society." "Author's Note: Most of the poems in the first half of the book have been revised since they were first published in 1938. I have also included several poems written at that time but never published before. The second half of the book consists of a selection of poems written during the past five years and, in addition, several poems selected from _Vaudeville for a Princess_ and one poem from _Genesis: Book One_, a long narrative poem which appeared in 1943. Thus, in a very real sense, all of the poems in this volume are selected poems; and, since for me, as for many poets, the temptation to revise one's work is often irresistible, there is also a sense in which all of the poems in this selection are new: I have not always included various revisions, but I have examined and chosen among them from the point of view which is signified by the title of the volume: _Summer Knowledge_." I. The Dream Of Knowledge 1. The Dreams Which Begin in Responsibilities - The Ballad of the Children of the Czar - In the Naked Bed, in Plato's Cave - At This Moment of Time - The Beautiful American Word, Sure - O Love, Sweet Animal - Father and Son - Far Rockaway - The Sin of Hamlet - Out of the Watercolored Window, When You Look - Someone Is Harshly Coughing as Before - Tired and Unhappy, You Think of Houses - In the Slight Ripple, The Mind Perceives the Heart - Concerning the Synthetic Unity of Apperception - Parlez-Vous Francais? - By Circumstances Fed - A Young Child and His Pregnant Mother - Prothalamion - Faust in Old Age - Sonnet: The Ghosts of James and Peirce in Harvard Yard - Sonnet: O City, City - What Is To Be Given - For the One Who Would Take Man's Life in His Hands - For the One Who Would Not Take His Life in His Hands - Saint, Revolutionist - Cambridge, Spring 1937 - Socrates' Ghost Must Haunt Me Now - The Ballet of the Fifth Year 2. The Repetitive Heart: Poems In Imitation Of The Fugue - All of Us Always Turning Away for Solace - Will You Perhaps Consent To Be - All Clowns Are Masked and All Personae - Calmly We Walk through This April's Day - Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers - Do the Others Speak of Me Mockingly, Maliciously? - I Am to My Own Heart Merely a Serf - Abraham and Orpheus, Be With Me Now - The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me - A Dog Named Ego, the Snowflakes as Kisses - Time's Dedication 3. Coriolanus and His Mother: A Dream Of Knowledge - Act One: "O Me! Make You a Sword of Me!" - Pleasure - Act Two: "His Soaring Insolence, the Common Muck" - Justice - Act Three: "There Is a World Elsewhere" - There Was a City - Act Four, Scene One: "Like to a Lonely Dragon" - Choose - Act Four, Scene Two: "A Goodly House, the Feast Smells Well" - He Is a Person - Act Five: "As If a Man Were Author of Himself" II. Summer Knowledge 4. The Fulfillment - At a Solemn Musick - Darkling Summer, Ominous Dusk, Rumorous Rain - The Fulfillment - The First Morning of the Second World - Summer Knowledge 5. Morning Bells - “I Am Cherry Alive,” the Little Girl Sang - O Child, Do Not Fear the Dark and Sleep's Dark Possession - The True-Blue American - The Would-Be Hungarian - Is It the Morning? Is It the Little Morning? - A Small Score - A Little Morning Music 6. The Kingdom of Poetry - Gold Morning, Sweet Prince - Vivaldi - Sterne - Swift - Holderlin - Baudelaire - The Kingdom of Poetry - Seurat's Sunday Afternoon along the Seine 7. The Deceptive Present, The Phoenix Year - The World Was Warm and White When I Was Born - I Am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read - The Conclusion - The Sequel - The Dark and Falling Summer - The Winter Twilight, Glowing Black and Gold - All of the Fruits Had Fallen - The Foggy, Foggy Blue - I Did Not Know the Truth of Growing Trees - All of Them Have Gone Away, Although They Once Were Near - I Did Not Know the Spoils of Joy - I Waken to a Calling - The Deceptive Present, The Phoenix Year - May's Truth and May's Falsehood - How Strange Love Is, in Every State of Consciousness - The Mounting Summer, Brilliant and Ominous - During December's Death - A Dream of Winter, Empty, Woolen, Ice-White and Brittle - In the Green Morning, Now, Once More 8. The Phoenix Choir - Once and for All - Cupid’s Chant - Psyche Pleads with Cupid - Narcissus: - - The Mind Is An Ancient And Famous Capital - - The Fear And Dread Of The Mind Of The Others - - The River Was The Emblem Of All Beauty: All - Abraham - Sarah - Jacob - Lincoln - Starlight Like Intuition Pierced the Twelve