ABSTRACT
Everybody called him Delmore Schwartz. The friends who wrote about him after his death make you think that to know him was to love him. One of the friends, the philosopher William Barrett, said he was the most magical human being he had ever known. Disasters were always raining on his parade, depressing people and risking fatigue. The work is a thornier problem. Time having winnowed it, just enough is left to make him worth retrieving, a handful of poems and one miraculous story. Delmore's story is tragic because it runs in a line. All his life, Delmore looked over his shoulder. His best story recapitulates the courtship of his parents. The poet who labors under a curse sounds like a Romantic copout. The curse is real, however, and vivid in the roll of poets in their misery dead. Society's hatred requires the death of the poet.
