James Schuyler

Yesterday we posted on the esteemed, much-lauded, poet of “the New York School”,
John Ashbery (1927-2017). Today our focus is his friend and sometime collaborator,
James Schuyler (1923-1991)

Next week (next Tuesday) sees the publication of Nathan Kernan‘s  much-anticipated biography, A Day Like Any Other (the title, of course, taken from the last line of one of Schuyler’s early poem, “February“)

Kernan has been diligently working on the book for some time now (the book was first commissioned in 2003).  Advanced word is it’s no disappointment whatsoever. On the contrary…

Wayne Kostenbaum (himself, one of the most astute commentators on Schuyler’s writing):

“How fastidiously and imaginatively Nathan Kernan sounds the depths of James Schuyler’s genius, while leaving its ultimate sources beautifully mysterious! Because of Kernan’s magnificent biography, with its profound interpretations of individual poems and its graceful recounting of Schuyler’s ups and downs, we can appreciate how seemingly without effort his masterpieces floated freely above the stark, fitfully glamorous events, inner and outer, of the poet’s rocky existence. Kernan’s lucidity and tenderness, combined with a welcome objectivity, allow Schuyler’s strange life to seem at once melodramatic and contemplative – a quietness, sometimes storm-tossed, befitting the profane saint he secretly was.”

James McCourt

“Nathan Kernan’s passionate five-star biography of James Schuyler affords the reader an  intimate look into the life of the truant poet of the so-called New York School, who seemed to have dropped in from ‘otherwhere.’ The biographer’s consummate skill in drawing telling inference from compelling implication matches his subject’s exacting method. A necessary book for all sent ‘otherwhere’ by poetry.”

Brad Gooch (Frank O’Hara‘s biographer):

At last, in A Day Like Any Other, we have a record of this mad, sad, modest, bemused, and passionate life, as well as meditations on the sublime poetry that tune into Schuyler’s frequency with crystal clarity. Nathan Kernan has written a perfectly pitched and masterly biography of one of our finest poets.”

Evan Kindley reviews it in the current July/August issue of The Nation – here

The Allen Ginsberg Project celebration back in 2023 on the occasion of his Centennial can be viewed – here.  

Here’s footage of the DIA Art Foundation’s Centennial Celebration:

Eileen Myles describes the book  as “a page-turner”.. warmly and astutely told” “a queer and passionate, glittering literary gem.”

Alex Katz  –  ..(It’s) like being there. It’s a supreme accomplishment.”

We couldn’t agree more. A hearty recommendation.