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unpublished poems from his archives.