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This collection of poetry showcases the unique talent of James Schuyler and highlights the writing that won him a Pulitzer Prize.
Amazon.com Review
Born in Chicago in 1923, the late James Schuyler gravitated early on toManhattan, where he came to be associated with such stalwarts of the NewYork School as Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery. Yet hiswork--unlike, say, Ashbery's, with whom he wrote a novel, A Nestof Ninnies--is eminently accessible. Indeed, Schuyler's Collected Poemsfunctions as an exquisite illustration of how to write poetry with acrystal-clear surface. And he always remains a master of the light touch,even when he himself is in desperate straits.

In Schuyler's long pieces, such as "Hymn to Life," "The Morning of thePoem," and "A Few Days," he casually reverses the romantic position:anti-didactic, anti-epiphanic, he trusts his imagination and resists anypsychological theorizing about why one memory, one perception, is connectedto another. He mistrusts monumentality. Wisdom, he knows, is enervating:"Things should get better as you / grow older, but that / is not the way.The way is inscrutable and hard to / handle." But long or short, Collected Poems is a record of discoveries, and each one is markedby Schuyler's terrific antennae and gift of tonal rightness. (The samequalities are on ample, if more casual, display in the poet'sdiary.) There's no question that he is among the most formidableand most observant poets of postwar America. Indeed, hisattractively quotidian elegy for W.H. Auden is a far more subtle poem thanthe endlessly quoted tour de force that Auden dedicated to W.B. Yeats:

I don't have to burn his
letters as he asked his
friends to do: they were lost
a long time ago. So much
to remember, so little to
say: that he liked martinis
and was greedy about the wine?
I always thought he would live
to a great age. He did not.
Wystan, kind man and great poet,
goodbye.

Customer Reviews (7)

Just wait
Surprisingly neglected, especially in the academy, Schuyler will soon be recognized as one of the most gifted poets of his generation.The deluge of doctoral dissertations cannot be far off; I encourage readers to beat the rush.

ONE OF THE BEST EVER
Except for his last poems, JS is one of the best poets ever and deserves more attention. If you're unfamiliar with his work, look at the cover and it'll tell you almost everything you need to know before you bask in the light.

A great poet
This collection should establish Schuyler as one of the great poets of his generation.I particularly admire his tautness--precise names and descriptions, inventive phrases--as well as his flexibility--a wide-ranging eye and ear and a free-flowing memory.Throughout these poems there lurks a clear intention to inform, to connect, to synthesize.I look forward to returning to this book many times for refreshment and illumination.

Almost Perfect!
James Schuyler's COLLECTED POEMS is a great volume of poetry.Rangingfrom aspects of daily life (such as plants, walks in the countryside,friends, urban life, etc.) to contemplation of death, life, one'sinteriority, and God, Schuyler's subjects are compelling and relevant. What I especially like is his ability to take a mundane, everyday object orconcept (like a view from a building) and give it a new, intensely personalperspective.This is his major gift.One aspect that I didn't like aboutsome of his poems (and this is true for all poets) is his tendency to beobscure at times (though only a small portion of his poems are abstruse)and his long, rambling prose poems, like "Hymn to Life." "The Morning of the Poem," though, is a fantastic and imaginativepiece of literature, broad in its scope and revealing of Schuyler in itstone and subjects.Overall, this volume of poetry unites the works of asuperb poet, who valued the artist's perspective and his or her obligationto record a view of the world different than that of the average person. This volume will, I fervently hope, remain in the continuum of literatureand in discussions of it for many years to come.

Wreckage and Romanticism
These sparkling poems mimic in their movements the springtime light that's always raining down around this poet, despite whatever woes he might have had.Read the long "Morning of the Poem" and tell me it isn'tone of the most moving poems in the history of poetry. ... Read more

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Here James Schuyler matches simplicity with subtlety to the same astonishing effect as in his much-admired poetry. What's for Dinner? revolves around three households in suburban Long Island. The Delehanteys are a traditional Catholic family, whose twin teenage boys are getting out of hand, no matter that their father is hardly one to spare the rod. Childless Norris and Lottie have been happily married for years, even if Lottie has been slowly drinking herself to death. Mag, a recent widow, is as crude as she is lonely and keen for companionship. After Lottie enters an institution to dry out, the book turns into what might be best characterized as an oddball comedy of group therapy manners. Her interactions with her fellow patients, simultaneously tetchy and tender, reflect the mixture of confusion, deception, desire, and hope in the lives of friends and family outside.

Charming and dark, off-kilter but pedestrian, matter-of-fact yet mercurial, What’s for Dinner? captures the fragility and toughness of ordinary life. Schuyler knows how thin the ice is that people skate on from day to day, and how deep the abyss that lies beneath. ... Read more

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James Schuyler, recipient of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, belongs with John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara to the first generation of New York School poets. Just the Thing makes him the first of that remarkable constellation of poets to have his letters published. Schuyler is the perfect letter writer, one who seeks to amuse and inform, who has a great sense of humor, lively and original opinions, an ear for gossip and the tart tongue to properly serve it, and who is a memorable phrase maker. At a memorial service after Schuyler's death, his friends Kenneth Koch and the painter Jane Freilicher paid tribute to Schuyler by reading aloud from his letters to them. The audience heard the man there in full in each of his sentences.

Editor William Corbett's selection includes roughly a third of the Schuyler letters currently available. There are numerous notes to his great correspondents Ashbery and the painter/writer Joe Brainard, and to Fairfield Porter, Frank O'Hara, John Button, Barbara Guest, Harry Mathews, Ron Padgett, Kenward Elmslie, Anne Dunn, Darragh Park, and a who's-who of poets and artists central to the downtown New York art scene from the early 1950s until Schuyler's death in 1991.An extraordinarily rich and compelling book, a wonder. James Schuyler's letters provide the perfect companion to his brilliant and memorable poems--hilarious, self-deprecating, insightful, and moving, ever so moving.--Paul AusterBy James Schuyler.

Edited by William Corbett.Paperback, 6 x 9 in. / 480 pgs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

This is not a book for the likes of me...
yet 5 stars! for the unstinting efforts of editor William Corbett who put 13 years into its preparation; for Jimmy's many true friends who were glad to help; for Jimmy himself who was warm and unpretensious, who chose to suppress anything hurtful to others, who endeavored to make each letter a little present enveloping "I care about you," who got through 40 years of creativity with the schizophrenia mallet poised above his head.

I like to read literary persons' (mostly homosexuals') diaries, memoirs, letters, as well as biographies. But a poet of the New York School is not truly appropriate for me because I don't read poetry. And all theNew York Schools of this and that, I view as indubitable cornerstones of the nation's arts beginning in the 1950s, but the thought remains: How much of this stuff is really any good, considering that in democratic America every man and woman has the vote and the talent? Who reads it in Britain, Canada, and Australia?

The book has 450 pages of letters and 887, yes 887, footnotes, blessedly succinct. This proliferation of footnotes arises from the fact that Jimmy loved to read all kinds of obscure books, even horticulture. Too, he plows up so many poets, artists, minor publishers, movies, records, etc. The book has a glossary comprising the names of two dozen of his chief correspondents plus explanatory paragraphs.

Of the NY School of Poets, O'Hara, Ashbery, and Koch were Harvard grads. Schuyler (1923-1991) was less fortunate. His parents divorced when he was six. His mother remarried when he was eight, and then had another son. His stepfather, reacting to Jimmy's homosexual aura and obsessive book reading, even tried to thwart the boy's getting a library card. After difficult teen years, Jimmy got a couple of years of college (he was not a good student), some WWII Navy, some Europe, and finally ended up in New York.

1951, when the Letters begin, was noteworthy: Jimmy placed three short stories, met O'Hara and Ashbery, had his first schizophrenic episode and was hospitalized for two months, then began writing his first poems. He was 28.

Jimmy loved to write letters, the longer the better, and to get them. It didn't matter whether there was anything important to communicate: open with an apology about tardiness, note the weather, cover all the maybes of shifting residences and visits and travel plans and get-togethers and poem publishing and money, praise your friend's poems or paintings, remember his or her birthday, close with love to you and yours, write me soon, Love, Jimmy.

Jimmy typed most of his letters, without carbons, so Editor Corbett appreciated their return by all the recipients. Except the executors of O'Hara (died 1966) held onto Schuyler's letters and published them in an independent volume.

Oddly, Jimmy passed more than a decade (1961-1973) living with the artist Fairfield Porter's family in Southampton and Great Spruce Head Island, Maine. They sought to help him in this woods-and-water retreat, for his mental breakdowns continued. His great delight was the daily mailboat to bring him a letter or two and to putter off with his outgoings.

Over the years, prescribed drugs, several psychoanalysts, finally even the church helped Schuyler to get more of a grip mentally. In 1979, several of his supporters installed him in the Chelsea Hotel. Over the years, he had a few extended affairs, and some guys he yearned for. Over the years, he wrote his poems about the simple good things in his existence; some were published by major houses or ephemeral mags, and in 1981 he won a Pulitzer Prize, and finally a Guggenheim Fellowship. In his later 60s, he was uplifted by enthusiastic responses to his several public readings. Then suddenly the stroke, and he died April 12, 1991.

Why did I , midway in these Letters, begin to count the pages until the end? Because there was too much chaff, blandness, repetition. There is lots of alcohol, but where's this gay man's cruising, wallows, flare-ups, crying, well-turned anecdotes, breakdown dramas and recoveries, street drugs? Where's the revelatory remarks about composing his poems? Well, Jimmy is just Jimmy, and he's entitled. He never wrote his letters for posterity.

I also read his Diary, Jan. 1, 1968-Jan. 1, 1991, a close cousin of his Letters. Ever onward, I'm about to read James Schuyler's Letters to Frank O'Hara (paperback 2006). ... Read more

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Art Criticism. Following THE DIARY OF JAMES SCHUYLER (declared by the New York Times a "treasure"), Black Sparrow has published SELECTED ART WIRITNGS OF JAMES SCHUYLER. Edited by poet Simon Petit, this book presents Schuyler's essays and articles composed mostly for the influential trade periodical Art News during his tenure as associate editor (1957-1962). A vivid composite portrait of the New York art scene of that time, this selection includes pieces on such artists as Gorky, Pollock, Rothko, Kline, Frankenthaler, Rivers, Rauschenberg and, of course, Fairfield Porter. Many articles are illustrated with photographs of the work. "The selection and the precise arrangement of the notices and reviews that comprise SELECTED ART WRITINGS represent a final draft of a project begun and sustained with the active engagement fo the author" -- Simon Pettet. "A violet-blue, the border of the glass over the pieta, emerges as an echo, as though if you squeezed a leaf hard enough a little sky blue would ooze out. The whole thing has the musical look of a clock." ("Joe Brainard: Quotes and Notes"). As John Ashbery has said, Schuyler is simply "the best we have." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Unsystematic Daily Appreciation
These are for the most part very short capsule reviews of shows in New York City in the 1950's and 60's. Many of the artists represented are relatively unknown (at least to me) so this allowed me to focus on Mr. Schuyler's responses themselves. And that's what so many of these reviews are - open-eyed responses to things seen, free of theory and so nearly timeless. Just as a snapdragon might appear in one of his poems written on a day in his life, so a dash of paint appears in one of his reviews written on a day in his life. ... Read more

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a surprise visit from a dear friend
Believe it or not, I became acquainted with the poetry of James Schuyler through a biography of Fairfield Porter, the representational painter who hung with the Rothko / de Kooning / Pollock crowd. Was I ever grateful. Schuyler, too, was a part of that great florescence of modern art that occurred in New York City after the second World War. In him (and in Frank O'Hara, whom I also love) is an openness and honest I just don't sense in most other modern poets. And a clear, unapologetic sense of where they are and when they are. I guess you might sum it all up in the words, "Nothing Is Ordinary." Everything is poem-worthy. It really is wonderful to have this additional volume of his work, additional to the Collected Poems (1993). It's like getting a surprise visit from a dear friend you haven't seen in years--and instantly falling in with each other as if no time has passed at all. And, as many of the previous "official" reviews point out, this isn't simply a collection of stuff that was found on the back of old shopping lists or lining his bird cage; these are bone fide vintage Schuyler, with all the detail and wit that make his "collected" poems a must have (assuming the Pulitzer in 1981 didn't pique your curiosity in the first place). And now, damn it, I'm going to have to give John Ashbury another try. There are more than a few poems dedicated to him or addressed to him. I tried reading his most recent collected poems (Notes from the Air, 2007) and had such a hard slog of it I had to surrender around page one-hundred. But apparently he and Schuyler were great friends (they even wrote a novel together) and you should always try extra hard to be friends with your friends' friends. Thankfully, American Library has a collection of his earlier books. ... Read more

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One of the finest American poets of the second half of the twentieth century, James Schuyler was at the same time a remarkable novelist. Alfred and Guinevere are two children who have been sent by their parents to spend the summer at their grandmother’s house in the country. There they puzzle over their parents’ absence and their relatives’ habits, play games and pranks, make friends and fall out with them, spat and make up. Schuyler has a pitch-perfect ear for the children’s voices, and the story, told entirely through snatches of dialogue and passages from Guinevere’s diary, is a tour de force of comic and poetic invention. The reader discovers that beneath the book’s apparently guileless surface lies a very sophisticated awareness of the complicated ways in which words work to define the often perilous boundaries between fantasy and reality, innocence and knowledge. This charming novel—out of print for nearly fifty years—is a small gem of postwar American fiction. "Prose as poetry really should be: among other things fresh, surprising, artful, and clear." -- Kenneth Koch ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A wonderful book
I worked with children for 14 years, and Alfred and Guinevere is one of the few books that seems to "get" kids. The brother and sister in A&G seem like real kids you might know. The book is rich and psychologically penetrating.
(Another great book about children: Nicholson Baker's The Everlasting Story of Nory)

The most unexpectedly "twisted" novella ever
The plot of this short novel--if it can be said to have a plot--is exactly what the cover says: "...Alfred and Guinevere are two children who have been sent by their parents to spend the summer at their grandmother's house in the country."Simple enough--and I've wanted to read it for a long time.I don't remember what I expected; perhaps children discovering nature in the countryside and poignant relationships with the elderly.But what a horrible surprise in a wonderful way, for this novel has truly pulled me in opposing directions: frustrating and perfect at the same time.Alfred and Guinevere was published in 1958, well before the wide-spread academic interest in subtext, in the effects of consumerism, as well as deconstruction theory, and social science theories of human development.Alfred is about 10 years old (4th grade, perhaps) and Guinevere about 12; and it becomes obvious to the reader looking for subtext that both children are products of the 1950s, offspring of well-to-do Anglo-American parents.Heaven knows what the author Schuyler intended, but right up front, he has Guinevere scribbling in her diary (in 3rd person) about her hoped-for adulthood: "She is one of the leading women spenders of her day and her example has done much to further the cause of women" (4).Even at 12 or 13 (remember this is 1958), she desires lots of shopping, and the "cause of women" is appropriately vague and immaterial.

An unintended topic of this novella must surely be how a certain economic class of white, sub-urban children start on their way to shaping themselves as upper middle-class consumers.For that reason--if that's what you're reading for--the novel is shocking: how little has changed in fifty years of childhood.And their dialogues--written like courtroom transcriptions--are dismaying and saddening; these comfortable white children are natural anarchists or nihilists, dominators, manipulators, deconstructionists without theory or method, button-pressing and provoking, natural lawyers or rhetoricians who can argue any point in any direction.In short, these children believe in nothing.Their lives are based on nothing, with no trajectory except satisfying the moment (well, except for future fame and profit, as G.G. plans).

The timing for reading a novel can be crucial to what we bring to it.For example, I noticed that Alfred and Guinevere are uncannily like the children I encounter when a school district substitute--rich or poor kids.Alfred's need for attention is insatiable; his primary activity is to show his sister things like how he learned to "spit through my teeth" (67).Guinevere's efforts to find friends with two other children are surely some of the most painful scenes I've ever read involving children.Chapter 12 reads like a telling expose of adult domestic roles through the surface perceptions of two twelve-year-old girls, a dialogue as though transcribed right from "reality" as the girls prepare themselves for debutant balls, expensive women's colleges, marriage to high-society doctors and CEOs.What comes through in this novel is how horribly vulnerable children are to the advertising around them.The paradox is that given the post-World War II development of a middle-class (in hindsight), Guinevere does seem to be a well-adjusted girl--well on her way to "making it" in the U.S. of A.One hopes that they will become hippies, and Alfred a draft dodger.

But there is more to this novel.I concluded that, stylistically--in a "post-modern" way--Alfred and Guinevere is an anti-novel: a primer on how to make one's characters remain the same while advancing the "plot" through the device of moving them around, from the town to the country, then to a ship to Europe (paid for by their father, to join him there).What was the "problem" with this novel? I asked myself.It had occurred to me that this story has no story; it's too raw a transcript of reality.And, surely, I thought, this depressing-undressed meaning I'm making of this novel was not intended by Schuyler.

If you've read this far, here's the lagniappe mystery gift that I got from this novel: when James Schuyler decided to give us child characters, he wrote them as they see themselves, not as we adults wish to see them.This is the absolutely miraculous thing Schuyler brings to literature: The adults in the novel suddenly appear on the page from an oblique angle, without warning, without narrative--just as they do in real life--right out of the immediate perceptions of a child, unclear images of adults who are rather ominous in a world which children know is controlled by them.

A sociologist with a literary bent or humanities expert with knowledge of the intersection of society and the craft of writing would have fun with this novel.Michel Foucault would have loved it.

beauty and poignancy
Out of print for nearly 50 years, New York Review Books has happily reprinted this slim, charming, nearly forgotten classic by Schuyler, best known as a poet. Told entirely through the dialogue, letters, and diary entries of two very precocious children -- Alfred and Guinevere, sent to live in the country with their uncle and grandmother for reasons not entirely clear to them -- Schuyler brilliantly and hilariously portrays their attempts to piece together the larger, enigmatic adult world around them. Beneath the book's apparently guileless surface, there also lies a sophisticated awareness of the complicated ways in which words work to define the boundaries between fantasy and reality, innocence and knowledge. Thoroughly delightful, Alfred and Guinevere will move you with both beauty and poignancy.

A funny, minor treasure
Schuyler is best remembered (with Kenneth Koch, John Ashberry, and Frank O'Hara) as one of the "New York" school of poets. This slim little novel, however, shows that his talents in prose have been underappreciated. ALFRED AND GUINEVERE is a hilarious little story--told entirely through dialogue, letters, and Guinevere's diary--of two very precocious children sent to live in the country with their uncle and grandmother for reasons initially unclear to them. Their attempts to piece together the larger adult world (which may comprise adultery, death, disappointment, and loneliness) are very funny and poignant, and though Alfred and Guienevere often get on each others' nerves their mutual devotion still rings quite true. This is a fast read, and its high quality may still not justify the exorbitant cover price. (NYRB has been charging too much for its editions, which are beautiful and spectacularly chosen, but often run to novella-length rather than to full novel-length). But I was glad I had bought--and read--this little-known jewel. ... Read more

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the perfect companion to his COLLECTED POEMS Amazon.com Review
Howard Moss famously remarked of James Schuyler's poetry: "He is in touch with parts of himself not usually available for examination and not often handled by most writers." Moss was referring to a sexual honesty, but Schuyler is also unusually in touch with the everyday. He saw himself as an observer rather than philosopher, and made magic of what others deem commonplace, knowing there was more going on directly underneath. In his diary, there is much talk of weather, the sort that he turned into fine poetry ("This soft October," for example) and more quotidian fantasy. The entry for Thursday, March 16, 1989, begins: "On this brilliant, cool, delicious day the city seemed the work of a child who owns a pencil, a ruler, and a paint set." As the eighties draw on, his cat, Barbara, becomes a key player. Then again, in the lives of his friends, so does AIDS.

Schuyler's diary also served as a commonplace--in the other sense of the word-book. Quotes range from John Webster's great play The Duchess of Malfi to several passages from the memoir of Harry Daley, E.M. Forster's policeman lover; and Nathan Kernan has carefully annotated sources and filled in lacunae. Who knew that Cardinal Spellman's camp nickname was Minnie? What a delight to come upon the name of that Hitchcock-film actress Nova Pilbeam! James Schuyler thought himself as an observer, not a philosopher, but his poetry and prose are filled with decisive moments. Unlike some artists' personal records, his don't seem as if they were written with an eye to future publication. That doesn't decrease their casual intensity. ... Read more

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great early book of poems by Pulitzer Prize poet ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

One of the great artists of our time
I love this art. it is the classic example of "less is more". his paintings have a real presence. I highly recommend this work. he is an artist's artist. ... Read more

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Poetry. Send us your best poem or drawing, the editors invited. Among those who did: John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Alex Katz, Alice Notley, Allen Ginsberg, Trevor Winkfield, Kenneth Koch, Charles Bernstein, Maureen Owen, Rackstraw Downes, Anne Waldman, Tony Towle, Paul Violi, Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter--81 altogether. "An unpretentious gem, something to have and hang on to"--Poetry Project Newsletter. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more