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Book Cover for: Screeno: Stories & Poems, Delmore Schwartz

Screeno: Stories & Poems

Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) was one of the finest writers of his generation. Winner of the prestigious Bollingen Prize and the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award, he was hailed by John Ashbery as "one of the major twentieth-century poets." Schwartz's stories were also widely read and loved, admired by James Atlas for their "unique style that enabled Schwartz to depict his characters with a sort of childlike verisimilitude." Graced with an introduction by Cynthia Ozick, this New Directions Bibelot, Screeno: Stories & Poems, gathers many of Schwartz's most popular works, including: "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," "America, America!" "The Heavy Bear who Goes with Me," and "Screeno." Also included is a newly discovered story, "The Heights of Joy," which appeared in the magazine Boulevard in 2002. Delmore Schwartz's life is legendary. The brightest star of the Partisan Review's post-war intellectual circle, a lecturer at Harvard and Princeton, and perhaps the greatest poet of his generation, he was stricken by a cruel mental illness and died after living in solitude in a Manhattan hotel. Yet it is his work that endures: "What complicates and enriches Schwartz's comedy," says Irving Howe, "is, I think, a reaching out toward nobility, a shy aspiring spirituality, a moment or two of achieved purity of feeling."

Book Details

  • Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
  • Publish Date: Jun 17th, 2004
  • Pages: 128
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.10in - 4.80in - 0.36in - 0.25lb
  • EAN: 9780811215732
  • Categories: Short Stories (single author)General

About the Author

Schwartz, Delmore: - 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.

Praise for this book

"The wunderkind in Schwartz was revealed to us in his 'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities' published too many years ago. No one else before then, and perhaps none since then, captured so marvelously the speech and the style of New York intellectuals of the '30s and '40s."