Delmore Schwartz

• The Poets' Pack (Rudge, New York, 1932), school anthology including four poems by Schwartz. • (New Directions, 1938), a collection of short stories and poems. • Shenandoah and Other Verse Plays (New Directions, 1941). • Genesis: Book One (New Directions, 1943), book-length poem about the growth of a human being. • The World Is a Wedding (New Directions, 1948), a collection of short stories. • Vaudeville for a Princess and Other Poems (New Directions, 1950). • (New Directions, 1959; reprinted 1967),. • Successful Love and Other Stories (Corinth Books, 1961; Persea Books, 1985), • Published posthumously: • Donald Dike, David Zucker (ed.) Selected Essays (1970; University of Chicago Press, 1985), • In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories (New Directions, 1978), a short story collection. • Letters of Delmore Schwartz, ed. Robert Phillips (1984) • The Ego Is Always at the Wheel: Bagatelles, ed. Robert Phillips (1986), a collection of humorous whimsical short essays • ed. Robert Phillips (New Directions, 1989) * • The Uncollected Delmore Schwartz, Arrowsmith Press, 2019.

One of the earliest tributes to Schwartz came from Schwartz's friend, fellow poet Robert Lowell, who published the poem "To Delmore Schwartz" in 1959 in the book Life Studies. In it, Lowell reminisces about the time that the two poets lived together in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1946, writing that they were "underseas fellows, nobly mad, / we talked away our friends." Schwartz's former student at Syracuse University, Lou Reed, was the singer and principal songwriter for the band the Velvet Underground. Wanting to dedicate a song to Schwartz on their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Reed chose "European Son" as it had the fewest lyrics; rock and roll lyrics were something Schwartz abhorred. The song was recorded in April 1966, three months before Schwartz's death, but was not released until March 1967. According to musicologist Richard Witts, the song "reads like little more than a song of loathing" toward Schwartz, who refused to see Reed while living at the Chelsea Hotel. Some pressings of The Velvet Underground & Nico referred to the song as "European Son (to Delmore Schwartz)". Lou Reed's 1982 solo album The Blue Mask includes his second Schwartz homage with the song "My House". A more direct tribute to Schwartz than the Velvet Underground's "European Son", the lyrics of "My House" are about Reed's relationship with Schwartz. In the song, Reed writes that Schwartz "was the first great man that I ever met". In the June 2012 issue of Poetry magazine, Lou Reed published a short prose tribute to Schwartz entitled "O Delmore How I Miss You". In the piece, Reed quotes and references a number of Schwartz's short stories and poems including "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities", "The World Is a Wedding", and "The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me". "O Delmore How I Miss You" was re-published as the preface to the New Directions 2012 reissue of Schwartz's posthumously published story collection In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories. Another musician to pay tribute to Schwartz is Bono, the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2, who was inspired by the poet's work when writing the lyrics of U2's "Acrobat". The song, from the band's 1991 album Achtung Baby, is dedicated to the poet and in its final verse is quoted the title of his book In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. In 1968, Schwartz's friend and peer, fellow poet John Berryman, dedicated his book His Toy, His Dream, His Rest "to the sacred memory of Delmore Schwartz", including 12 elegiac poems about Schwartz in the book. In "Dream Song #149", Berryman wrote of Schwartz, In the brightness of his promise, unstained, I saw him thro' the mist of the actual blazing with insight, warm with gossip thro' all our Harvard years when both of us were just becoming known I got him out of a police-station once, in Washington, the world is tref and grief too astray for tears. The most ambitious literary tribute to Schwartz came in 1975, when Saul Bellow, a one-time protégé of Schwartz, published his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Humboldt's Gift, which was based on his relationship with Schwartz. Although the character of Von Humboldt Fleischer is Bellow's portrait of Schwartz during Schwartz's declining years, the book is actually a testament to Schwartz's lasting artistic influence on Bellow. Although he is a genius, the Fleischer/Schwartz character struggles financially and has trouble finding a secure university teaching position. He becomes increasingly paranoid and jealous of the success of the main character, Charlie Citrine (who is based upon Bellow himself), becoming isolated and descending into alcoholism and madness. Charles Bukowski wrote a biographical poem about Schwartz, published in his posthumous Open All Night. He characterized Schwartz's writing: his criticism was brilliant in its rancor and decisiveness; he was really more of a bitch than a bard- his poetry too fawning and delicate. as a critic he was a good surgeon, as a poet he was stalled in a kind of stale whimsy. In 1996, Donald Margulies wrote the play Collected Stories, in which an aging writer and teacher reveals to a young student that she once had a great affair in her youth with Schwartz in Greenwich Village while Schwartz was in declining health from alcoholism and mental illness. The student then controversially uses the affair revelation as the basis for a successful novel. The play was produced twice off-Broadway and once on Broadway. In John A. McDermott's poetry collection The Idea of God in Tennessee, he includes a poem written for and referencing Schwartz, titled The Poet's Body, Unclaimed in the Manhattan Morgue. The poem makes mention of Schwartz's writing, daily habits, and death. A play by Romulus Linney about Schwartz's friendship with Milton Klonsky, Schwartz's protege and friend and a writer of nonfiction, was presented at Ensemble Theater Company in New York City in November and December 2005, and at The Redhouse Theatre in Syracuse, N.Y., during its 2004/05 season. In the final episode of the third season of True Detective, Wayne Hays' (Mahershala Ali) wife, Amelia Reardon (Carmen Ejogo), reads to her students "Calmly We Walk through This April's Day".