My review reflects my thoughts on this collection as a whole rather than the poetry of Delmore Schwartz itself, about which I am not qualified to judge.
Until recently I had hardly heard of Delmore Schwartz, and certainly knew none of his poetry, so I was delighted to get hold of this comprehensive collection, which reproduces the five books he published during his lifetime, plus some prose, and some unpublished work. It also includes his 2-part autobiographical work Genesis. So all of his output is gathered here for the first time, with an excellent – and for me essential – introduction, which will help me explore further.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an e-ARC!

Delmore Schwartz's works are, admittedly, not my cup of tea; but as a lover of poetry, I can but only be glad to see more of the genre be published, and especially 'forgotten' poets. This is a very comprehensive collection, from which I would recommend you cherry pick when you feel like it (to confront a book this massive at once is intimidating); spanning the entirety of Schwartz's poetic life and offering a wide array of type of poems.

Despite my overall lack of appreciation for them (I think I'm just more of a contemporary poetry guy), some poems caught my eye, so here are my five favourites from this enormous collection:
- The Ballad of the Children of the Czar
- Is It the Morning? Is It the Little Morning?
- Darkling Summer, Ominous Dusk, Rumorous Rain
- The Foggy, Foggy Blue
- "I am to my own heart merely a serf" (poem VII in 'The Repetitive Heart')

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy of this collection of works by a poet who has been unfortunately forgotten, but who is finally getting recognition after so much time.

In the arts sometimes the one that burn with so much promise, are extinguished by indifference, vitriol and the fears that lie inside every artist. Maybe it is changing tastes, or jealous compatriots, even critics who like to be known for destroying rather than building up. Sadly, as I wrote sometimes its those fears, the voices that remind us we are not good enough, or those usual demons ; drink, drugs, destructive relationships that destroy all of a person's drive. One has their entire life to be published, but to stay a literary darling, one needs to feed the beast. And beasts are sometimes never happy. Delmore Schwartz was such a poet. A short story brought him to attention, a collection gave him fame, a second collection scorn, and third started the downward slide. Depression, drink, failed marriages, and job jumping did the rest. The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz edited by Benjamin Andrew Mazer is the first collection in quite a long time of Schwartz's work, and might finally remind people of the poet that many have forgotten.

This collection reprints all of the full length works published during Schwartz's lifetime. Starting with his first collection In Dreams Begin Responsible, the same name as the short story hat first announced Schwartz to the world, this collection was acclaimed for something new in poetry, featuring works but innovative and stylish. Schwartz's second collection was a translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell, and was not regarded as well. Complaints were made about the translation, the word usage, though many other poet, Auden and Eliot both seemed to like and use it as examples. Schwartz's third collection Genesis: Book One was considered by Schwartz to be his best, but was received with a general air of apathy. Two other collections are included along with many that were unpublished in Schwartz's time, and a few that were thought lost.

I first heard of Delmore Schwartz in a biography of Lou Reed as Schwartz served as a mentor to Reed while Reed went to Syracuse University, where Schwartz finally wound up. There were quite a few stories about Schwartz reading in bars and falling asleep, or getting into fights. Reed later wrote a few songs about Schwartz and discusses his influence and one can see that both Schwartz and Reed shared a sense of humor, a bit of self-loathing along with an air of superiority. I enjoyed this collection quite a bit. Some of the poems, even the ones that were derided I thought were good. Some were not, but that it expected in a complete work. One can sense the unease in some of the works that went unreleased, did Schwartz still have his gift, were these any good. I liked the style and presentation. I always feel funny discussing poetry since I don't understand most of the method of its creation. I know what I like and what I don't like. And these I really liked.

Thanks have to go to the publisher for compiling and collecting this work along with the editor. The sadness that a person could labor so long, be considered so gifted and forgotten within one's own creative career to me is a very sad thing. There are some beautiful works in here. I am glad that people have another chance to read these, and enjoy them.

Delmore Schwartz, dubbed by John Berryman "the most underrated poet of the twentieth century," is granted some of the recognition he deserves in "The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz." This comprehensive collection spans from his debut to his unpublished late works, offering readers a chance to explore his entire poetic journey. The poems themselves are a testament to Schwartz's ability to craft verses that vary widely from song-like dreams to psychological portraits to sardonic parodies.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Delmore Schwartz has become more of a poetic legend, I believe, than a poet actually read any more, nor do I suspect a new collection of his works to stir much enthusiasm. Of course, that being said, when I learned such a collection, including unpublished poems, would be available, I jumped at the chance to get a copy. As I sit here typing, a copy of Schwartz’s Selected Poems is on the table. From what I can tell after a summarily comparison with the Collected Poems, the poems from the SP are included in the CP, the order is changed, as for any revisions for the CP I did not find any. In addition to several previously unpublished poems there are poems not in the SP as well as two of Schwartz’s longer works, his translation of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell and the autobiographical narrative Genesis, the second half in print for the first time.

Several of Schwartz’s short poems prefer form over substance, which overtime devolved into puerile parody of his masters, some of them clever, others funny. He appeared to have something against Robert Frost, mocked in several poems, one, Stopping Dead from the Neck Up, an alcoholic’s self-pitying ribbing, begins:

Whose booze is this, I ought to know.
I bought it several weeks ago.

The truly greats are forgiven much. If Schwartz relied heavily on the formalism of Shakespeare, Donne, George Herbert and Marvel, he did so with an exacting ear, never a misstep, until those parodies, his poems were fierce with a seductive musicality that made his work worthy of the accolades received. Which isn’t to say there wasn’t substance. But even when writing his Genesis, his own self, his true calling was as a ventriloquist. No wonder he was drawn to Rimbaud’s tone poem of voices as inspiration for Genesis, his own choral tone poem, with an actual chorus of ghosts from classical concert music and Greek classical drama.

The first part of Genesis is treated by Freudian psychology, such a lengthy piece of Freudian based work probably unknown before Sartre’s five-volume Freudian analytical biography of the Flaubert. Schwartz hit all the complexes, the father, sexual desire beginning in childhood, and abandonment, while managing to tell a pretty good story of young Hershey Green of Brooklyn and his European forebears.

Genesis part two, recalling the two parts of Goethe’s Faust, appearing years later, shifts from a wisdom handbook of Green’s narration of his saga with commentary by the ghosts to a confusion of voices, overwhelming the voice of Green. The second part of Genesis is touched by Sandburg and Hart Crane. The sections entitled Child Helen play on Byron’s Childe Harold. A look further reveals the hero in Robert Graves’ White Goddess, published in 1948, probably known to Schwartz, his Helen a persona of the white goddess and following Graves as sleuth pursuing the first person identity of the hero through the history of the minnesinger and verse, Schwartz’s Green questions his identity. Schwartz’s contribution in Helen 63 is his resurrecting the voice of Rimbaud’s bride in A Season in Hell: ‘Ah but my years are fabulous, despite myself,/ Every river of nature, every passage of man:/I am this history which I rehearse so much, /I am my years, rather than flesh and blood ... ‘

Early on, I caught the rhyme scheme of Holmes’ Old Ironsides flowing through much of Schwartz’s poetry. To find later in Genesis 2 the poem itself, followed by laughter, was a shared inside joke in seeing my suspicions made good.

There are good poems and some bad poems, but the bad poems forgivable as one forgives Wordsworth’s bad poems and some of Pound’s tortured Cantos. What I’ve been saying is, if you’re willing to spend time with the poems collected here, especially Genesis, you’ll discover Delmore Schwartz’s Collected Poems to be a marvelous treasure trove.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for an ARC