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Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) was born and raised in Brooklyn. One of America’s greatest poets and short-story writers, Schwartz contributed “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” to the first issue of Partisan Review in 1937. Schwartz taught at Syracuse, Princeton, and Kenyon College, and received the Bollingen Prize in 1959. After a difficult period of alchoholism and depression, he died of a heart attack in 1966.
Craig Morgan Teicher is a poet and critic. His most recent book of poems is To Keep Love Blurry (BOA, 2012). He lives with his wife and children in New York City.
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet John Ashbery (1927—2017) translated many French writers, including Alfred Jarry, Pierre Reverdy, and Raymond Roussel. In 2011 he was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Once and for All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz
by Delmore Schwartz, Craig Morgan Teicher (Editor), John Ashbery (Introduction)
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ISBN-13:
9780811224338
- Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Publication date: 04/28/2016
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 280
- File size: 2 MB
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The publication of this book restores a missing chapter in the history of twentieth-century American literature
With his New Directions debut in 1938, the twenty-five-year-old Delmore Schwartz was hailed as a genius and among the most promising writers of his generation. Yet he died in relative obscurity in 1966, wracked by mental illness and substance abuse. Sadly, his literary legacy has been overshadowed by the story of his tragic life.
Among poets, Schwartz was a prototype for the confessional movement made famous by his slightly younger friends Robert Lowell and John Berryman. While his stories and novellas about Jewish American experience laid the groundwork for novels by Saul Bellow (whose Humboldt’s Gift is based on Schwartz’s life) and Philip Roth.
Much of Schwartz’s writing has been out of print for decades. This volume aims to restore Schwartz to his proper place in the canon of American literature and give new readers access to the breadth of his achievement. Included are selections from the in-print stories and poems, as well as excerpts from his long unavailable epic poem Genesis, a never-completed book-length work on T. S. Eliot, and unpublished poems from his archives.
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Publishers Weekly
02/01/2016Readers may view this new compendium as a feast, or just a tasting menu designed to entice one deeper into Schwartz’s oeuvre. Either way, it shows the depth and diversity of his work. There are two pieces of fiction (one, a novella), scores of poems plucked from various published collections, three pieces of literary criticism, and several letters that, if they don’t enhance Schwartz’s literary reputation directly, peg him as an intriguing friend of the greats: Ezra Pound, Allen Tate, William Carlos Williams, and others. The lengthy introduction by John Ashbery serves the same purpose, discussing some of the included work, as well as placing Schwartz (1913–1966) in a literary context. Most interesting are previously unpublished fragments from a book-length study of T.S. Eliot that was never finished. “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” a compelling short story, is set in 1909 and features the Coney Island boardwalk, a fortune teller, and childhood dreams. “The World Is a Wedding,” the novella, is a quiet and sometimes rambling coming-of-age story, told in short, titled chapters—each of which has immersive and sometimes provocative exchanges. The generous serving of poetry includes selections from five books, as well as a pair of unpublished poems and two unique verse dramas. This is a consistently intriguing volume that devotees and neophytes will want on their shelf. (Apr.)
Irving Howe
What complicates and enriches Schwartz’s comedy is, I think, a reaching out toward nobility, a shy aspiring spirituality, a moment or two of achieved purity of feeling.Lou Reed
I wanted to write. One line as good as yours. My mountain. My inspiration.Donna Seaman - Booklist
This richly illuminating collection should help secure Schwartz the renewed appreciation he deserves.Jason Boog - Los Angeles Review of Books
This new collection of Delmore Schwartz's work reads like a literary "CV of Failures," a powerful testament to a life shaken by the Great Depression. As we navigate the long road to national recovery, we can use his writing both as a mirror and as a compass.Adam Kirsch - Tablet
Once and for All serves as an ideal introduction for the curious reader.”Matt Hanson - The Arts Fuse
The brilliant, doomed Delmore Schwartz was one of his generation's strongest creative talents, but his imaginative work has been sadly neglected. Once and for All is the latest and most comprehensive collection of his work to date and the volume takes on a very valuable task: it attempts to give Schwartz's provocative and multifaceted literary legacy its long-deserved due.”Jonathan Galassi - The New York Review of Books
Delmore's genius survives in the sound of his words, in his hypnotizing lines.Mark Ford - TLS
For Schwartz poetry was ongoing and unstoppable, a process as compulsive and endless as the mariner's telling of his tale.National Post
One of the young princes of American literature in the middle of the 20th centuryPatrick James Dunagan - Rain Taxi
[V]ivid details of lived experience are thrust throughout Schwartz’s writing. Readers are left reeling among elemental features of the world,physical and immediate yet drenched as well with historical and literary ambience.