"The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me" by Delmore Schwartz (poetry reading)

What shall I say about this poor feller who has a serious case of body dysmorphia? He reminds me of my wife when she hasn't shaved her legs for a week. The bloke thinks he's a bear. It might have been worse. He could have been a girl and been called Ursula.

Which reminds me of a little poem. "Mary had a little lamb, She also had a bear, I never liked her little lamb, But I always ... " er, no, really that's altogether too childish.

Gray's Elegy has a couple of lines that make schoolkids giggle, "Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear". Almost as funny as that hymn Grandma sings, "Gratefully, my cross-eyed bear".

The body is intrusive on our spiritual self: it grows hair in unaesthetic places, it doesn't have the contours of a greek statue, it escapes from the containers into which we stuff it and, in short, it generally refuses to conform to our restraints, restrictions and requirements.

Not only that, it doesn't stay the same, inexorably it changes ever flowing downwards and outwards, getting saggier and crinklier with unwanted efflorescences, bumps where we wanted hollows and vice versa. We can't do without it but fortunately it does last a lifetime - almost.

The spiritual self seems less unreliable, less fallible, less lickerish, less ridiculous; no wonder some people hopefully believe that it persists after the body has disintegrated.

a "factotum" is an employee to whom jobs can be delegated, a servant perhaps.

"The scrimmage of appetite", is a good phrase to describe human behaviour. Like pigs at a trough.

Some critics say this is a poem about alcoholism. That's just stupid. Can't they read? The reference is to "The withness of the body", from "The Theory of Perception" by Alfred Whitehead, who was a chum of Bertrand Russell's. .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead

Delmore Schwartz published this when he was 24. He'd just graduated from Harvard and was still at that establishment studying philosophy, presumably Wittgenstein, Russell and Whitehead who were then current. He was doing okay at this point in his life. Prohibition didn't end until he was 20.

The other silly misapprehension is that the poem is about being fat. It isn't. Delmore was a slim young man.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/universos/Pessoas/DelmoreSchwartz.jpg

Unfortunately, a long time after he wrote this poem, Delmore Schwartz did graduate as an alcoholic. Part of the problem was the misery of failing to live up to his early promise. He spent many lost weekends, and eventually lost everything else including his career, his wife and eventually his life to a premature heart attack 30 years later. Saul Bellow wrote a book about his Decline and Fall called Humboldt's Gift but I haven't read it. The best portrayal of the toils of alcoholism I have read is Charles R. Jackson's The Lost Weekend, written in about the same year as this poem. It's a book that changes forever the way you see the world even if you're not a drunk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Weekend_(novel) You can still buy it from Amazon.

The bear picture came from a site about American and Canadian Indians which contains lots of info, legends, clipart etc.
http://www.firstpeople.us

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Tags:

• heavy
• bear
• delmore
• schwartz
• alcoholic
• alcoholism
• poem

[RyguyDrummer15]

Thumps up if TF2 Brought you here!!!

[SpokenVerse]

@louist457 I'm sorry but this poem is often used for schoolwork - unfortunately I can't allow remarks to remain if they contain profanity or language that might be offensive to some people. Nevertheless I appreciate the fact that you took time to listen and give your opinion. He's not talking about his wife, incidentally, but the constant presence his own body.

[TheFunkysnaill]

I dream I was a wolf

Alone in the forest

[nastynigel]

This is just brilliant... a perfect marriage between text and performance...Wonderful, bravo

[nastynigel]

wow..."the beast in me is caged my frail and fragile bars, restless by day and by night rants and rages at the stars, god help the beast in me "( nick lowe)

wonderful poem and a beautful reading

nasty nigel

[Paneuropax]

I was deeply touched by this poem. I googled lou reed and came across Delmore Schwartz Im usually not into poems but I somehow feel this one. It feels somehow familiar in a very creepy way. But it feels good somehow too. Im really impressed somehow.

[eclectorsdevices]

Superbly executed performance; surpassed, perhaps, only be your commentary

[TheArchDandy]

I really like this poem... somehow I hadn't heard it. It came across me at an appropriate time today, and it's a good reading as well..