THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY IN ENGLISH

*Contemporary Recordings of the Poets Reading Their Own Poems Selected and Arranged by the Consultants in Poetry in English at The Library of Congress and Issued under a Grant from The Bollingen Foundation*

Delmore Schwartz

THE REPETITIVE HEART, PART IX ★ SELECTION FROM
GENESIS: MANIC-DEPRESSIVE LINCOLN, NATIONAL
HERO! ★ STARLIGHT LIKE INTUITION PIERCED THE
TWELVE

[THIS TEXT ISSUED FOR DISTRIBUTION ONLY WITH LIBRARY OF CONGRESS POETRY RECORD P 50]

DELMORE SCHWARTZ was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1913 and educated at Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, and New York University, where he received his B.A. in 1935. He also studied at Harvard University, where later he was Briggs-Copeland assistant professor of English composition, from 1943-47. He has been associate editor of *Partisan Review* since 1943 and a lecturer in philosophy at New York University, 1949-50. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1940.

Schwartz has written verse, fiction, plays in verse, and criticism. His first book was *In Dreams Begin Responsibilities* (poetry and prose), 1938, followed by *A Season in Hell* (a translation of Rimbaud), 1939, *Shenandoah* (a poetic drama), 1941, *Genesis* (poetry and prose), 1943, *The World is a Wedding* (stories), 1948, and *Vaudeville for a Princess; and Other Poems*, 1950, all published by New Directions, New York.

*References:* Mark Van Doren, *Kenyon Review*, Spring 1939; and *The Private Reader*, New York, Henry Holt, 1942; R. P. Blackmur, *Kenyon Review*, Summer 1943; Frank James, *The Nation*, Aug. 14, 1943.

"The Repetitive Heart," Part IX, is reprinted from *In Dreams Begin Responsibilities*, New York, New Directions, 1938. Copyright, 1938, by Delmore Schwartz. Used by permission of the author and publisher. "Manic-depressive Lincoln, National Hero!" is a selection from *Genesis*, New York, New Directions, 1943. Copyright, 1943, by Delmore Schwartz. Used by permission of the author and publisher. "Starlight Like Intuition Pierced the Twelve" first appeared as "Starlight Like Intuition" in the anthology, *New Poems, 1944*, New York, Howell, Soskin, Publishers, 1944. Copyright, 1944, by Oscar Williams. A revised version, "The Starlight's Intuition Pierced the Twelve" appeared in the 1944 summer issue of the *Kenyon Review*.

Reprinted from *A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry*, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946. Copyright, 1946, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by permission of the author. Acknowledgment is made to the publishers of periodicals and anthologies in which these poems first appeared.

P 50 A ☆ THE REPETITIVE HEART

PART IX

"the withness of the body"

—WHITEHEAD

The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
—The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,

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PL 5 E.E. CUMMINGS: "plato told him." "my father moved through dooms of love." ROBINSON JEFFERS: Oh, Lovely Rock. The Beaks of Eagles. Ossian's Grave. THEODORE SPENCER: The Day. The Inflatable Globe. A Narrative. Problem of Immortality. The Phoenix. JOHN CROWE RANSOM: Bells for John Whitesides' Daughter. Janet Waking. Here Lies a Lady. Captain Carpenter. $4.95

PL 6 ROBERT FROST: The Witch of Coös. The Mountain. Come In. Mowing. The Pasture. Reluctance. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. The Most of It. An Old Man's Winter Night. Provide, Provide. The Runaway. Acquainted With the Night. Choose Something Like a Star. A Drumlin Woodchuck. Why Wait for Science. Departmental. A Considerable Speck. One Step Backward Taken. On Looking up by Chance at the Constellation. A Soldier. The Gift Outright. Directive. $4.95

PL 7 WILLIAM MEREDITH: String Quartet. Carrier. Battlewagon. Transport. YVOR WINTERS: Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight. John Sutter. Time and the Garden. The California Oaks. RANDALL JARRELL: Lady Bates. Stalag Luft. KARL SHAPIRO: Elegy for a Dead Soldier. $4.95

PL 8 HERBERT READ: A World Within a War. PHELPS PUTNAM: Ballad of a Strange Thing. JOHN BERRYMAN: Winter Landscape. The Ball Poem. The Lightning. Canto Amore. HORACE GREGORY: Opera, Opera. Chorus for Survival. Poem 14. Fortune for Mirable. $4.95

PL 9 DELMORE SCHWARTZ: The Repetitive Heart. Part IX. From Genesis. Manic depressive Lincoln, National Hero. Starlight Like Intuition. Pierced the Twelve. RICHARD BLACKMUR: Three Poems from a Text - Isaiah LXI: 1-3: I. Beauty for Ashes, II. The Oil of Joy for Mourning, III. A Garment of Praise for the Spirit of Heaviness. STEPHEN SPENDER: An Elementary School Class Room in a Slum. The Landscape Near an Aerodrome. The Pylons. "An 'I' can never be great man." "I think continually of those who were truly great." A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map. ELIZABETH BISHOP: Faustina, or, Rock Roses. Jeronimo's House. At the Fishouses. $4.95

PL 10 THEODORE ROETHKE: The Lost Son. WITTER BYNNER: A Thrush in the Moonlight. From Against the Cold. Sonnets 14, 18, and 20. A Dance for Rain. ROBERT FITZGERALD: De Orbe Novo. Celestine. Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus - From Scene VIII: Messenger Scene. MARYA ZATURENSKA: Water and Shadow. For the Seasons. Snowstorm in January. After St. Theresa. The Castaway. Falling Tears. Awakening Heavens. $4.95

PL 11 ROBERT LOWELL: Christmas Eve under Hooker's Statue. Death of the Sheriff, Part I. Between the Porch and the Altar: I. Mother and Son, II. Adam and Eve, III. Katherin's Dream, IV. At the Altar. CONRAD AIKEN: Preludes for Memnon XIV, XIX, LXIII. Preludes for Memnon III, XXIX. WILLIAM EMPSON: To an Old Lady. Just a Smack at Auden. Missing Dates. Bacchus. ARCHIBALD MACIEISH: Epistle to be Left in the Earth. The Shape of Flesh and Bone, from "Act five." Conquistador: Bernal Diaz' Preface to His Book. The Too-Late Born. Once Sang, from "Act five." $4.95