One of the young princes of American literature in the middle of the 20th century, Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966), turned his career and his life into a tragic legend. His own excellent writing is demonstrated in Once and Forever: The Best of Delmore Schwartz (New Directions), edited by Craig Morgan Teicher. Reed adopted Schwartz as his mentor and later wrote a tribute to him in Poetry magazine – “O Delmore how I miss you. It was Schwartz, apparently, who first said “Even paranoids have real enemies,” a line I’ve seen credited to Leon Trotsky. Harry Schwartz and Rose Nathanson, Jewish immigrants from Romania, were ill matched.

Source: National Post January 31, 2017 17:51 UTC