a five-year appointment as a faculty instructor. . .

"Haunted by the war--which he continued to denounce bitterly in his letters--by teaching, and by what he called an 'inevitable mid-winter staleness,' Delmore found himself amid two crises in the spring of 1943. On March 2, he learned that a committee had been formed to decide on whether to offer him a five-year appointment as a faculty instructor, and they proposed to visit one of his classes. Delmore, 'in a frozen slump' at the time, objected strenuously to what he thought of as an unprecendented procedure, and decided to refuse their request--'on principle,' he told Berryman. At once defiant and unnerved, he worked out an elaborate argument by which he hoped to win Morrison's support before presenting his position to the committee: 'With enough benzedrine and coffee, in half an hour I can win them over.'"

~~ from James Atlas's Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet