Vox Populi
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Delmore Schwartz: O Love, Sweet Animal
O Love, dark animal,
With your strangeness go
Like any freak or clown:
Appease the child in her
Because she is alone
Many years ago
Terrified by a look
Which was not meant for her.
Brush your heavy fur
Against her, long and slow
Stare at her like a book,
Her interests being such
No one can look too much.
Tell her how you know
Nothing can be taken
Which has not been given:
For you time is forgiven:
Informed by hell and heaven
You are not mistaken.
Delmore Schwartz (1913 – 1966) did graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University, where he studied with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Schwartz received acclaim for his first collection In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, published when he was 25 years old, but problems with alcoholism and mental illness prevented him from fulfilling his early promise. Nevertheless, his work had a strong influence on other writers including John Berryman, Lou Reed and Robert Lowell. Saul Bellow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Humboldt’s Gift was based on his relationship with Schwartz.
From In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (New Directions, 1938)
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“Appease the child in her
Because she is alone”. Yes!
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yes!
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Marvelous and strange: “Brush your heavy fur/
Against her, long and slow”–I admire the way the poet gives directions to Love and recognizes the bookishness of the beloved.
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“the bookishness of the beloved.” Great phrase. This evening, I’m going to slip it into conversation with my philosopher wife.
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By the way, Miriam. My beloved bookish wife will recognize the phrase is not mine, so I’ll have an opportunity to footnote your genius.
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Thank you Vox Pop. A lot of intricacy in a short poem. When I read what this guy wrote, whether it’s his prose fiction or his poetry, I get a rare combination punch. Instant flashes of human recognition (“yes, yes, I know what you mean”) combined with the perplexity of sensing insights that can only be hinted at.
The title “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” is quite a statement in itself. Lou Reed was a student of Schwartz’s at Syracuse University. Thanks again.
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Thanks, Mike. I love reading your insights.
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Fantastic. Thank you for highlighting it. I’ve been a fan of Delmore’s for a long time. My old friend, James Atlas, wrote the superb biography of him. 🙂
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Thanks, David. When I first started reading poetry in the 1970s, Schwartz was briefly popular again, perhaps because of Saul Bellow’s novel. I fell in love with the music of his language and the wildness of his metaphors. Your friend James Atlas has brought his work again into the public eye. Bless him. Schwartz was a genius who burned out early. A terrible loss to American literature.
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I love this poem for its incantatory music.
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