In 1959, Delmore Schwartz became the youngest recipient of the Bollingen Prize, awarded for a collection of poetry published that year, Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems. Three years later, he was teaching at Syracuse University when KR published a selection of new poems.
Nonfiction
Spring 1941
The Isolation of Modern Poetry
The characteristic of modern poetry which is most discussed is of course its difficulty, its famous obscurity. Certain discussions, usually by contemporary poets, have done much to illuminate the new […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1941
Neither Historian Nor Critic
New England: Indian Summer by Van Wyck Brooks. Dutton. $3.75 One must agree that Mr. Brooks’s success is perfectly justified. The Flowering of New England has had more than a […]
Poetry
Spring 1962
The Journey of a Poem Compared to All the Sad Variety of Travel
A poem moves forward, Like the passages and percussions of trains in progress A pattern of recurrence, a hammer of repetitive occurrence a slow less and less heard Low thunder […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
The Sequel
First love is first death. There is no other. There is no death. But all men live forever And die forever. If this were not true, We would be more […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
Poem
O child, when you go down to sleep’s secession, You become more and other than you are, you become the procession Of bird and beast and tree: you are a […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
Poem
O child, when you go down to sleep’s secession, You become more and other than you are, you become the procession Of bird and beast and tree: you are a […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
Once and for All
Once, when I was a boy, Apollo summoned me To be apprenticed to the endless summer of light and consciousness, And thus to become and be what poets often have […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
Poem (The Foggy, Foggy Playboy)
When I was a young man, I lived to write poems And I called a spade a spade And the only only thing that made me sing Was to lift […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
Sonnet
The world was warm and white when I was born: Beyond the window pane the world was white, A glaring whiteness in a leaded frame, Yet warm as in the […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
“At a Solemn Musick”
Let the musicians begin, Let every instrument awaken and instruct us In love’s willing river and love’s dear discipline: We wait, silent, in consent and in the penance Of patience, […]
Poetry
Autumn 1955
The First Morning of the Second World
Suddenly. Suddenly and certainly, while I watched elsewhere, locked And intent in that vigil in which the hunter is the hunted As the mind is, seeking itself, falconer, falcon and […]
Fiction
Summer 1952
The Fabulous Twenty-Dollar Bill
I never liked him, said Professor Robbins to his wife, “and now I know very well why I don’t like him.” “He has had a hard time,” said his wife […]
Poetry
Spring 1950
The Early Morning Light
I Others may fear this goddess, but none will (Whether you brag or wail, how can you know?) Fear her as you do, like a criminal! Doubt, hope, and passion […]
Fiction
Spring 1946
A Bitter Farce
The summer was a very difficult summer for Mr. Fish, youthful teacher of composition and author of promise. He had never before taught in the wet heat of summer, and […]
Poetry
Summer 1944
The Starlight’s Intuitions Pierced the Twelve
The starlight’s intuitions pierced the twelve,The brittle night sky sparkled like a tuneTinkled and tapped out on the xylophone.Empty and vain, a glittering dune, the moonArose too big, and, in […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1944
The Hero in Russia
The Hero In History by Sidney Hook. John Day. $2.50. This is a weak book, and especially weak from the author of such pioneer works as “Towards The Understanding of […]
Fiction
Winter 1942
An Argument in 1934
In the year of our Western culture 1934, Noah Gottlieb went one Saturday morning to meet his friend, Harry Morton. 2. Harry Morton worked in The New York Public Library […]
A Verse Play
Summer 1941
Shenandoah or, the Naming of the Child
To Francis Fergusson (Enter Shenandoah, to the right. A spotlight shines on him as the theater is darkened.) Shenandoah: This was the greatest day of my life! I was eight […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1939
The Criterion, 1922-39
A leader, Mr. Eliot stated in one of his Criterion Commentaries, may be defined as that one of the Gadarene swine which runs the fastest. Mr. Eliot may have had […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1939
The Two Audens
Auden moves fast, like a good boxer. His subject, his opponent, present-day England, is moving fast also. Perhaps the fate of the poet is bound up with the fate of […]
Weekend Reads
An Argument in 1934
From the Kenyon Review, Winter 1942, Vol. IV, No. 1 I. 1. In the year of our Western culture 1934, Noah Gottlieb went one Saturday morning to meet his friend, […]
Weekend Reads
The First Morning of the Second World
From the Kenyon Review, Fall 1955, Vol. XVII, No. 4 Suddenly. Suddenly and certainly, while I watched elsewhere, locked And intent in that vigil in which the hunter is the […]