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Hymn To Life: Poems
- GenresPoetry
139 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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January 22, 2022
Though the collection is entitled THE HYMN TO LIFE, many of the poems are about death. At least in the first part. Death is, I suppose, a big part of life. And perhaps by commemorating the deaths of friends and celebrities, the poet hoped to celebrate their lives, to celebrate life itself.
The collection is broken into six parts: "Waterbury", "Elsewhere", "Loving You", "Evenings in Vermont", "The Faure Ballade", and "Hymn to Life".
The first part, "Waterbury", is almost entirely composed of poems about death. Indeed, the first part reads like one long elegy (as in "Beautiful Funerals" and "Mike"). And yet somehow the poet includes his signature humour (as in "Beautiful Funerals" and "Roxy"). It is worth mentioning that the first poem, "Beautiful Funerals", makes direct reference to Jessica Mitford, author of THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH...
He's no four-flusher,
kind of con man (ask Jessica, Jessica knows).
Has he a fish eye?
Not necessarily.
Is he a creep?
Not on my street.
Is he a ghoul?
Oh get lost.
- Beautiful Funerals.
"I get so bored
on Sunday" with
this here
it is
a blues
and call it
Sunday Blue
- Roxy a Sunday blues
Frank O'Hara chats
apart with Carole Lombard
and James Dean while
John O'Hara makes
whoopee at a dignified
gait with Scott Fitz-
gerald and Nathanael
West. And where is
Papa? Honking where
the wild goose goes...
- Beautiful Funerals
Mike is dead.
I can't
talk to
him....
- Mike
Notably, the poet returns to the death of Janis Joplin (in "Mike"), a subject he indirectly addressed in his previous collection, THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM...
I'm puttin' on
Pearl (O Pearl) and
The In White Wrappers
(groovy group)
or Company...
- Janis Joplin's Dead: Long Live Pearl (from THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM)
Now Pearl -
dead too:
Janis
Joplin sings
on.
- Mike
What sets the first part apart from the rest of the collection is the length and width. Here, the poet decided to make his poems uncommonly thin, with lines that average one to three words in length. What happens is, the first part starts wide and ends thin. If the pages were cut out of the book and spread out, it would create an interesting visual effect...
Who's the man with all that greenery, the shrubs, the velvet turf,
who's the gink they all make fun of
in tones not touched with awe?
"Good
morning"
what's-
your-name.
- In the round
(Note: "Gink" is not a racial epithet, though it may resemble one. "Gink" is a slang, meaning: "A man, especially one regarded as foolish or contemptible.")
The second part begins with an elegy of its own, "To Frank O'Hara". Frank O'Hara belonged to the New York School, along with Schuyler and many others. His premature death in 1966 touched all of the New York School poets. Certainly it touched Schuyler, who references O'Hara more than once in this collection.
Though the elegy is entitled "To Frank O'Hara", it is dedicated to Don Allen, a publisher and editor of O'Hara's poetry (in fact, he is directly referenced in O'Hara's "Personal Poem" from LUNCH POEMS)...
Frank O'Hara chats
apart with Carole Lombard
- Beautiful Funerals
like a race horse that
just won the race
steaming, eager to run
only you used words.
- To Frank O'Hara for Don Allen
To say that "many of the poems in the collection are about death" is to overlook the poems about life. Indeed, they collection is not only about life, but it is itself alive with the poet's exuberance and humour.
While "To Frank O'Hara" is a celebration of life on the occasion of a death, "To Bob Dash" is a celebration of life on the occasion of a birthday. In fact, HYMN TO LIFE is dedicated "To Bob". Bob Dash was a poet and painter. Working as an editor for Noonday Press and an art critic for Arts and Art News in the 1950s, he was introduced to Schuyler and the rest of the New York School poets...
The lilacs here
stand in lilac glory, cornucopias
from Persia. And a white one too:
to you I send their staunchness
in beauty, to you there where
the paint on canvas flows...
- For Bob Dash on his birthday
Life is celebrated in many ways throughout the collection. Most prominently, the poet celebrates life with his signature/trademark innocence and playfulness. A form of optimism that is uncharacteristic of poets from the post-war era. Perhaps more characteristic of the hippie era? Though Schuyler is not aligned with the hippie movement. Indeed, he celebrates in many ways. Often descending into a sort of orgiastic silliness that finds its outlet in nonsense, the use of cliché, rambling, or any other number of exuberant expressions...
Tomorrow is another day. But then, so was yesterday.
You have garlic on your breath. And a toy steamer.
Poised at the keys.
Let me see your tongue. Just as I thought. It's coated.
In twelve years these shoes won't owe you a cent.
Drink up.
She gave him the brush-off.
Just imagine.
Maraschino cherry, where have you been all my life?
Go peddle your papers.
Here comes the night, a slow motion tidal wave.
Where do you go in your sleep? Take me with you.
In a sliced orange you might expect to find the golden section.
That photograph. It's an amenity.
Happiness wells up, and a vee of geese pass overhead.
Happiness! Isn't that all that Matters?
- Bleeding Gums
The newspaper comes. It
has a bellyful of bad news.
The sun is not where it was.
Nor is the moon. Once so
flat, now so round....
- The sky eats up the trees
Even darker subjects are rendered into lightness or ridiculousness by Schuyler's poetical voice. The poet express this process best as "Bad news is a funny kind / of breakfast." (The sky eats up the trees) This is not the same sentiment as Erma Bombeck's "thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy..." This is not the same sentiment as Mel Brooks's "tragedy is when I stub my toe, comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die..." This is the optimism of Schuyler...
"We can make
each other happy."
Radiant clarity,
why, today, do
I think of death?
- Labor Day
And for no
reason my eyes
and the sky
fill with
tears. Two
kinds of
weather and
if you never
cry, well,
then you don't.
- So Good
The collection is full of interesting references. In the second part, there are references to Kaspar Hauser (in "Eyes at the Window") and Umberto D (in "Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero"), among other things...
Kaspar Hauser
waits at the station. He has something
he urgently wishes to say...
- Eyes as the Window
Deep in its
penetrable blank unclarity you see
the little frizzy-headed maid
in Umberto D, knocked up, grinding coffee
and from ducts in rain rivulets seep
two slow tears....
- Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero
In the poem "Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero", Schuyler addresses several lines to the fog, thanking it, albeit with less formality than W. H. Auden...
No summer sun will ever
dismantle the global gloom
cast by the Daily Papers,
vomiting in slip-shod prose
the facts of filth and violence
that we’re too dumb to present:
our earth’s a sorry spot, but
for this special interim,
so restful yet so festive,
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Fog.
- W. H. Auden, "Thank You, Fog" (from THANK YOU, FOG)
Thanks, fog:
it's handy, getting to know someone
so instantly you don't want to
know them any better or further. "Fog,
you may go now. It's time for all
good little angels to go upstairs
and fly" blueward through blue.
- Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero
Indeed, the poems of this collection may retain Schuyler's comedic and somewhat rambling voice, but the style and structure is varied. Often alluding to or mimicking other poets, such as Auden. One poem in particular, "Labor Day", resembles the poetry of Robert Creeley, a poet of the Black Mountain College...
What I say
to people
don't mean
I don't love,
what I
do don't
do, don't don't
do enough.
- Robert Creeley, "Blues" (from LATER)
Not what I think
or see (I can't:
sun in my eyes)
or remember, or
will be - what
do I know of that? -
or never knew
or know for sure,
just this day
its clarity...
- Labor Day
The third part, like the fourth part of THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM, is entitled "Loving You". Not surprisingly, the poems of this part are predominantly love poems...
So delicate,
so tender, so strong. It
was like that when we
kissed and smiled. Nothing
lasts forever, but this way
is so much better than
any other when I
missed you so....
- Was It
And when I thought,
"Our love might end"
the sun
went right on shining
- Daylight
And I see, clear as
light, your body
naked on our bed
and the white line
at the bottom of
your belly the sun
drew where you
wore your trunks.
I can't wait. Til
Thursday, love.
- Up
You're having fun
I hope. I hope
so so much. It's
not that I
think of you all
the time. But
I think of you
a lot....
- Saturday Night
Fortunately the love poems of this part aren't overly romantic or sentimental or otherwise nauseating. No matter how many times the poet flips his poetical coin, it always seems to land comedic side up...
I'll
bet you like
pissing in the
sea. People who
don't seem off
to me....
- You're
I studied sand
and the sand-like freckles
on your back and, smaller
than small, one blackhead
(later removed)
- A blue towen
In a poem entitled "Poem", the poet includes a reference to Vermont in October. The feeling of déjà vu. Indeed, the state of Vermont and the month of October seem to find their way into his poems often...
The thought
of harm from you is
far from me as those
Vermont hills, en-
flamed, in October,
as I by you, in their
seasonal rush....
- Poem
Books litter the bed,
leaves the lawn. It
lightly rains. Fall has
come: unpatterned, in
the shedding leaves.
- October
The hills that last year in early October I saw enflamed and raging are now the browns and grays of lichened bark...
- A Vermont Diary, November 1 (from THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM)
October hangs in grape
bunch lights among the leaves
of a giant tree whose leaves
are not unlike grape leaves...
- Evening Wind (from THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM)
The fourth part, following the poet's preoccupation with Vermont, is entitled "Evenings in Vermont". However, neither the state of Vermont nor the month of October are not as prominent a part of this part as the reader would expect...
That bluet breaks
me up, tiny spring flower
late, late in dour October.
- The Bluet
The sky suddenly is
streaked with fire at only 4:45
in the afternoon. Ir evening. Day-
light saving time is over....
- Evenings in Vermont
Dreaming of a white
Vermont, scratched
by alders and firs.
- Afterward
The poems of this part are heavily descriptive. They are descriptive of a time and a place that may or may not be the month of October and the state of Vermont. However the reader decides to interpret/attribute these poems, they seem to lack the humour of the earlier parts...
Flies buzz in the window
pane. It is their dying
season. The house
is painted grey. The fields
befuzz themselves with
milkweed silk....
- "From the next . . ."
But
those shivering,
hovering late moths,
the size of big
snowflakes: what
were they doing
there, so late
in the year?
- The Day
But that's not to suggest that this part is devoid of humour...
Winter knocks at
the door. Don't
let it in....
- The Day
And that
dog that leapt out at me! How
I hate him, how he scares me.
"You're a good dog," I said in
feigned placating tones....
- Evenings in Vermont
Everything seems to be either gray or blue (sometimes both)...
Standing and watching
through the drizzle
how the mist and further
edge of pond merge
into one grayness, a colour
called drained-of-blueness.
- Standing and Watching
Down
the valley a
line of far-
off mountains
are deeper,
bluer than the
sky....
- Sunset
The day is gray
as stone...
- The Day
After two rainy days, a sunny one
of cloud curds breaking up in blue.
- Evenings in Vermont
The fifth part, "The Fauré Ballade", is composed entirely of the long poem, "The Fauré Ballade". I don't know whether or not "The Fauré Ballade" qualifies as a poem. The idea of "what is a poem?" seems to be in constant flux. Here, the poet does not refer to "The Fauré Ballade" as a poem but as an anthology of quotes, misquotes, and (no doubt) misremembered remarks...
The quotes are derived from a vast number of sources. The majority (if not all of them) are poets. The poet most prominently featured is Frank O'Hara, who appeared earlier in the collection. Many of the O'Hara quotes are undoubtedly derived from the extensive correspondence exchanged by the two poets (available in its own published volume)...
The pearls dropped loudly on the floor.
- Frank O'Hara
What a hot day it is! for
Jane and me above the scorch
- Frank O'Hara
My dear, you have to smile LIKE THE SUN.
- Frank O'Hara
All things are tragic
when a mother watches!
- Frank O'Hara
moment of infinitely salty air!
- Frank O'Hara
and moon-like, too, the gentle Norma Shearer
- Frank O'Hara
In addition, Schuyler quotes notable poets such as Wallace Stevens and Arthur Rimbaud. Along with John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, also of the New York School...
The intelligence is part of the comedy of life.
- Wallace Stevens
Ta tête se détourne: le nouvel amour! Ta tête se retourne, - le nouvel amour!
- Arthur Rimbaud
Sometimes I wish the raggle-taggle gypsies would come and take me away.
- John Ashbery
They saw her standing in that simple field.
- Kenneth Koch
The fifth part, "Hymn to Life", is composed entirely of the long poem, "Hymn to Life"...
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away
The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.”
The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence
And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made:
There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but
Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
Never again the same. “Why, this is hell.” Out of the death breeding
Soil, here, rise emblems of innocence, snowdrops that struggle
Easily into life and hang their white enamel heads toward the dirt
And in the yellow grass are small wild crocuses from hills goats
Have cropped to barrenness. The corms come by mail, are planted.
Then do their thing: to live! To live! So natural and so hard
Hard as it seems it must be for green spears to pierce the all but
Frozen mold and insist that they too, like mouse-eared chickweed,
Will live. The spears lengthen, the bud appears and spreads, its
Seed capsule fattens and falls, the green turns yellowish and withers
Stretched upon the ground. In Washington, magnolias were in bud. In
Charlottesville early bulbs were up, brightening the muck. Tomorrow
Will begin another spring. No one gets many, one at a time, like a long
Awaited letter that one day comes. But it may not say what you hoped
Or distraction robs it of what it once would have meant. Spring comes
And the winter weather, here, may hold. It is arbitrary, like the plan
Of Washington, D.C. Avenues and circles in asphalt web and no
One gets younger: which is not, for the young, true, discovering new
Freedoms at twenty, a relief not to be a teen-ager anymore. One of us
Had piles, another water on the knee, a third a hernia—a strangulated
Hernia is one of life’s less pleasant bits of news—and only
One, at twenty, moved easily through all the galleries to pill
Free sleep. Oh, it’s not all that bad. The sun shines on my hand
And the myriad lines that criss-cross tell the story of nearly fifty
Years. Sorry, it’s too long to relate. Once, when I was young, I
Awoke at first light and sitting in a rocking chair watched the sun
Come up beyond the houses across the street. Another time I stood
At the cables of a liner and watched the wake turning and
Turning upon itself. Another time I woke up and in a bottle
On a chest of drawers the thoughtful doctor had left my tonsils. I
Didn’t keep them. The turning of the globe is not so real to us
As the seasons turning and the days that rise out of early gray
—The world is all cut-outs then—and slip or step steadily down
The slopes of our lives where the emotions and needs sprout. “I
Need you,” tree, that dominates this yard, thick-waisted, tall
And crook branched. Its bark scales off like that which we forget:
Pain, an introduction at a party, what precisely happened umpteen
Years or days or hours ago. And that same blue jay returns, or perhaps
It is another. All jays are one to me. But not the sun which seems at
Each rising new, as though in the night it enacted death and rebirth,
As flowers seem to. The roses this June will be different roses
Even though you cut an armful and come in saying, “Here are the roses,”
As though the same blooms had come back, white freaked with red
And heavily scented. Or a cut branch of pear blooms before its time,
“Forced.” Time brings us into bloom and we wait, busy, but wait
For the unforced flow of words and intercourse and sleep and dreams
In which the past seems to portend a future which is just more
Daily life. The cat has a ripped ear. He fights, he fights all
The tom cats all the time. There are blood gouts on a velvet seat.
Easily sponged off: but these red drops on a book of Stifter’s, will
I remember and say at some future time, “Oh, yes, that was the day
Hodge had a torn ear and bled on the card table?” Poor
Hodge, battered like an old car. Silence flows into my mind....
- Hymn to Life
My favourite passages...
who stops and looks at
a street sign, turns,
hesitates and goes off
like the actor one often
feels: "Frowns,
looks at watch, goes
off" and in the sky
cloud words melt
and all run together.
- Two
Unexpected
as a tear when someone
reads a poem you wrote
for him: "It's this line
here...."
- The Bluet
The collection is broken into six parts: "Waterbury", "Elsewhere", "Loving You", "Evenings in Vermont", "The Faure Ballade", and "Hymn to Life".
The first part, "Waterbury", is almost entirely composed of poems about death. Indeed, the first part reads like one long elegy (as in "Beautiful Funerals" and "Mike"). And yet somehow the poet includes his signature humour (as in "Beautiful Funerals" and "Roxy"). It is worth mentioning that the first poem, "Beautiful Funerals", makes direct reference to Jessica Mitford, author of THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH...
He's no four-flusher,
kind of con man (ask Jessica, Jessica knows).
Has he a fish eye?
Not necessarily.
Is he a creep?
Not on my street.
Is he a ghoul?
Oh get lost.
- Beautiful Funerals.
"I get so bored
on Sunday" with
this here
it is
a blues
and call it
Sunday Blue
- Roxy a Sunday blues
Frank O'Hara chats
apart with Carole Lombard
and James Dean while
John O'Hara makes
whoopee at a dignified
gait with Scott Fitz-
gerald and Nathanael
West. And where is
Papa? Honking where
the wild goose goes...
- Beautiful Funerals
Mike is dead.
I can't
talk to
him....
- Mike
Notably, the poet returns to the death of Janis Joplin (in "Mike"), a subject he indirectly addressed in his previous collection, THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM...
I'm puttin' on
Pearl (O Pearl) and
The In White Wrappers
(groovy group)
or Company...
- Janis Joplin's Dead: Long Live Pearl (from THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM)
Now Pearl -
dead too:
Janis
Joplin sings
on.
- Mike
What sets the first part apart from the rest of the collection is the length and width. Here, the poet decided to make his poems uncommonly thin, with lines that average one to three words in length. What happens is, the first part starts wide and ends thin. If the pages were cut out of the book and spread out, it would create an interesting visual effect...
Who's the man with all that greenery, the shrubs, the velvet turf,
who's the gink they all make fun of
in tones not touched with awe?
"Good
morning"
what's-
your-name.
- In the round
(Note: "Gink" is not a racial epithet, though it may resemble one. "Gink" is a slang, meaning: "A man, especially one regarded as foolish or contemptible.")
The second part begins with an elegy of its own, "To Frank O'Hara". Frank O'Hara belonged to the New York School, along with Schuyler and many others. His premature death in 1966 touched all of the New York School poets. Certainly it touched Schuyler, who references O'Hara more than once in this collection.
Though the elegy is entitled "To Frank O'Hara", it is dedicated to Don Allen, a publisher and editor of O'Hara's poetry (in fact, he is directly referenced in O'Hara's "Personal Poem" from LUNCH POEMS)...
Frank O'Hara chats
apart with Carole Lombard
- Beautiful Funerals
like a race horse that
just won the race
steaming, eager to run
only you used words.
- To Frank O'Hara for Don Allen
To say that "many of the poems in the collection are about death" is to overlook the poems about life. Indeed, they collection is not only about life, but it is itself alive with the poet's exuberance and humour.
While "To Frank O'Hara" is a celebration of life on the occasion of a death, "To Bob Dash" is a celebration of life on the occasion of a birthday. In fact, HYMN TO LIFE is dedicated "To Bob". Bob Dash was a poet and painter. Working as an editor for Noonday Press and an art critic for Arts and Art News in the 1950s, he was introduced to Schuyler and the rest of the New York School poets...
The lilacs here
stand in lilac glory, cornucopias
from Persia. And a white one too:
to you I send their staunchness
in beauty, to you there where
the paint on canvas flows...
- For Bob Dash on his birthday
Life is celebrated in many ways throughout the collection. Most prominently, the poet celebrates life with his signature/trademark innocence and playfulness. A form of optimism that is uncharacteristic of poets from the post-war era. Perhaps more characteristic of the hippie era? Though Schuyler is not aligned with the hippie movement. Indeed, he celebrates in many ways. Often descending into a sort of orgiastic silliness that finds its outlet in nonsense, the use of cliché, rambling, or any other number of exuberant expressions...
Tomorrow is another day. But then, so was yesterday.
You have garlic on your breath. And a toy steamer.
Poised at the keys.
Let me see your tongue. Just as I thought. It's coated.
In twelve years these shoes won't owe you a cent.
Drink up.
She gave him the brush-off.
Just imagine.
Maraschino cherry, where have you been all my life?
Go peddle your papers.
Here comes the night, a slow motion tidal wave.
Where do you go in your sleep? Take me with you.
In a sliced orange you might expect to find the golden section.
That photograph. It's an amenity.
Happiness wells up, and a vee of geese pass overhead.
Happiness! Isn't that all that Matters?
- Bleeding Gums
The newspaper comes. It
has a bellyful of bad news.
The sun is not where it was.
Nor is the moon. Once so
flat, now so round....
- The sky eats up the trees
Even darker subjects are rendered into lightness or ridiculousness by Schuyler's poetical voice. The poet express this process best as "Bad news is a funny kind / of breakfast." (The sky eats up the trees) This is not the same sentiment as Erma Bombeck's "thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy..." This is not the same sentiment as Mel Brooks's "tragedy is when I stub my toe, comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die..." This is the optimism of Schuyler...
"We can make
each other happy."
Radiant clarity,
why, today, do
I think of death?
- Labor Day
And for no
reason my eyes
and the sky
fill with
tears. Two
kinds of
weather and
if you never
cry, well,
then you don't.
- So Good
The collection is full of interesting references. In the second part, there are references to Kaspar Hauser (in "Eyes at the Window") and Umberto D (in "Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero"), among other things...
Kaspar Hauser
waits at the station. He has something
he urgently wishes to say...
- Eyes as the Window
Deep in its
penetrable blank unclarity you see
the little frizzy-headed maid
in Umberto D, knocked up, grinding coffee
and from ducts in rain rivulets seep
two slow tears....
- Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero
In the poem "Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero", Schuyler addresses several lines to the fog, thanking it, albeit with less formality than W. H. Auden...
No summer sun will ever
dismantle the global gloom
cast by the Daily Papers,
vomiting in slip-shod prose
the facts of filth and violence
that we’re too dumb to present:
our earth’s a sorry spot, but
for this special interim,
so restful yet so festive,
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Fog.
- W. H. Auden, "Thank You, Fog" (from THANK YOU, FOG)
Thanks, fog:
it's handy, getting to know someone
so instantly you don't want to
know them any better or further. "Fog,
you may go now. It's time for all
good little angels to go upstairs
and fly" blueward through blue.
- Gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero
Indeed, the poems of this collection may retain Schuyler's comedic and somewhat rambling voice, but the style and structure is varied. Often alluding to or mimicking other poets, such as Auden. One poem in particular, "Labor Day", resembles the poetry of Robert Creeley, a poet of the Black Mountain College...
What I say
to people
don't mean
I don't love,
what I
do don't
do, don't don't
do enough.
- Robert Creeley, "Blues" (from LATER)
Not what I think
or see (I can't:
sun in my eyes)
or remember, or
will be - what
do I know of that? -
or never knew
or know for sure,
just this day
its clarity...
- Labor Day
The third part, like the fourth part of THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM, is entitled "Loving You". Not surprisingly, the poems of this part are predominantly love poems...
So delicate,
so tender, so strong. It
was like that when we
kissed and smiled. Nothing
lasts forever, but this way
is so much better than
any other when I
missed you so....
- Was It
And when I thought,
"Our love might end"
the sun
went right on shining
- Daylight
And I see, clear as
light, your body
naked on our bed
and the white line
at the bottom of
your belly the sun
drew where you
wore your trunks.
I can't wait. Til
Thursday, love.
- Up
You're having fun
I hope. I hope
so so much. It's
not that I
think of you all
the time. But
I think of you
a lot....
- Saturday Night
Fortunately the love poems of this part aren't overly romantic or sentimental or otherwise nauseating. No matter how many times the poet flips his poetical coin, it always seems to land comedic side up...
I'll
bet you like
pissing in the
sea. People who
don't seem off
to me....
- You're
I studied sand
and the sand-like freckles
on your back and, smaller
than small, one blackhead
(later removed)
- A blue towen
In a poem entitled "Poem", the poet includes a reference to Vermont in October. The feeling of déjà vu. Indeed, the state of Vermont and the month of October seem to find their way into his poems often...
The thought
of harm from you is
far from me as those
Vermont hills, en-
flamed, in October,
as I by you, in their
seasonal rush....
- Poem
Books litter the bed,
leaves the lawn. It
lightly rains. Fall has
come: unpatterned, in
the shedding leaves.
- October
The hills that last year in early October I saw enflamed and raging are now the browns and grays of lichened bark...
- A Vermont Diary, November 1 (from THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM)
October hangs in grape
bunch lights among the leaves
of a giant tree whose leaves
are not unlike grape leaves...
- Evening Wind (from THE CRYSTAL LITHIUM)
The fourth part, following the poet's preoccupation with Vermont, is entitled "Evenings in Vermont". However, neither the state of Vermont nor the month of October are not as prominent a part of this part as the reader would expect...
That bluet breaks
me up, tiny spring flower
late, late in dour October.
- The Bluet
The sky suddenly is
streaked with fire at only 4:45
in the afternoon. Ir evening. Day-
light saving time is over....
- Evenings in Vermont
Dreaming of a white
Vermont, scratched
by alders and firs.
- Afterward
The poems of this part are heavily descriptive. They are descriptive of a time and a place that may or may not be the month of October and the state of Vermont. However the reader decides to interpret/attribute these poems, they seem to lack the humour of the earlier parts...
Flies buzz in the window
pane. It is their dying
season. The house
is painted grey. The fields
befuzz themselves with
milkweed silk....
- "From the next . . ."
But
those shivering,
hovering late moths,
the size of big
snowflakes: what
were they doing
there, so late
in the year?
- The Day
But that's not to suggest that this part is devoid of humour...
Winter knocks at
the door. Don't
let it in....
- The Day
And that
dog that leapt out at me! How
I hate him, how he scares me.
"You're a good dog," I said in
feigned placating tones....
- Evenings in Vermont
Everything seems to be either gray or blue (sometimes both)...
Standing and watching
through the drizzle
how the mist and further
edge of pond merge
into one grayness, a colour
called drained-of-blueness.
- Standing and Watching
Down
the valley a
line of far-
off mountains
are deeper,
bluer than the
sky....
- Sunset
The day is gray
as stone...
- The Day
After two rainy days, a sunny one
of cloud curds breaking up in blue.
- Evenings in Vermont
The fifth part, "The Fauré Ballade", is composed entirely of the long poem, "The Fauré Ballade". I don't know whether or not "The Fauré Ballade" qualifies as a poem. The idea of "what is a poem?" seems to be in constant flux. Here, the poet does not refer to "The Fauré Ballade" as a poem but as an anthology of quotes, misquotes, and (no doubt) misremembered remarks...
The quotes are derived from a vast number of sources. The majority (if not all of them) are poets. The poet most prominently featured is Frank O'Hara, who appeared earlier in the collection. Many of the O'Hara quotes are undoubtedly derived from the extensive correspondence exchanged by the two poets (available in its own published volume)...
The pearls dropped loudly on the floor.
- Frank O'Hara
What a hot day it is! for
Jane and me above the scorch
- Frank O'Hara
My dear, you have to smile LIKE THE SUN.
- Frank O'Hara
All things are tragic
when a mother watches!
- Frank O'Hara
moment of infinitely salty air!
- Frank O'Hara
and moon-like, too, the gentle Norma Shearer
- Frank O'Hara
In addition, Schuyler quotes notable poets such as Wallace Stevens and Arthur Rimbaud. Along with John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, also of the New York School...
The intelligence is part of the comedy of life.
- Wallace Stevens
Ta tête se détourne: le nouvel amour! Ta tête se retourne, - le nouvel amour!
- Arthur Rimbaud
Sometimes I wish the raggle-taggle gypsies would come and take me away.
- John Ashbery
They saw her standing in that simple field.
- Kenneth Koch
The fifth part, "Hymn to Life", is composed entirely of the long poem, "Hymn to Life"...
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away
The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.”
The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence
And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made:
There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but
Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
Never again the same. “Why, this is hell.” Out of the death breeding
Soil, here, rise emblems of innocence, snowdrops that struggle
Easily into life and hang their white enamel heads toward the dirt
And in the yellow grass are small wild crocuses from hills goats
Have cropped to barrenness. The corms come by mail, are planted.
Then do their thing: to live! To live! So natural and so hard
Hard as it seems it must be for green spears to pierce the all but
Frozen mold and insist that they too, like mouse-eared chickweed,
Will live. The spears lengthen, the bud appears and spreads, its
Seed capsule fattens and falls, the green turns yellowish and withers
Stretched upon the ground. In Washington, magnolias were in bud. In
Charlottesville early bulbs were up, brightening the muck. Tomorrow
Will begin another spring. No one gets many, one at a time, like a long
Awaited letter that one day comes. But it may not say what you hoped
Or distraction robs it of what it once would have meant. Spring comes
And the winter weather, here, may hold. It is arbitrary, like the plan
Of Washington, D.C. Avenues and circles in asphalt web and no
One gets younger: which is not, for the young, true, discovering new
Freedoms at twenty, a relief not to be a teen-ager anymore. One of us
Had piles, another water on the knee, a third a hernia—a strangulated
Hernia is one of life’s less pleasant bits of news—and only
One, at twenty, moved easily through all the galleries to pill
Free sleep. Oh, it’s not all that bad. The sun shines on my hand
And the myriad lines that criss-cross tell the story of nearly fifty
Years. Sorry, it’s too long to relate. Once, when I was young, I
Awoke at first light and sitting in a rocking chair watched the sun
Come up beyond the houses across the street. Another time I stood
At the cables of a liner and watched the wake turning and
Turning upon itself. Another time I woke up and in a bottle
On a chest of drawers the thoughtful doctor had left my tonsils. I
Didn’t keep them. The turning of the globe is not so real to us
As the seasons turning and the days that rise out of early gray
—The world is all cut-outs then—and slip or step steadily down
The slopes of our lives where the emotions and needs sprout. “I
Need you,” tree, that dominates this yard, thick-waisted, tall
And crook branched. Its bark scales off like that which we forget:
Pain, an introduction at a party, what precisely happened umpteen
Years or days or hours ago. And that same blue jay returns, or perhaps
It is another. All jays are one to me. But not the sun which seems at
Each rising new, as though in the night it enacted death and rebirth,
As flowers seem to. The roses this June will be different roses
Even though you cut an armful and come in saying, “Here are the roses,”
As though the same blooms had come back, white freaked with red
And heavily scented. Or a cut branch of pear blooms before its time,
“Forced.” Time brings us into bloom and we wait, busy, but wait
For the unforced flow of words and intercourse and sleep and dreams
In which the past seems to portend a future which is just more
Daily life. The cat has a ripped ear. He fights, he fights all
The tom cats all the time. There are blood gouts on a velvet seat.
Easily sponged off: but these red drops on a book of Stifter’s, will
I remember and say at some future time, “Oh, yes, that was the day
Hodge had a torn ear and bled on the card table?” Poor
Hodge, battered like an old car. Silence flows into my mind....
- Hymn to Life
My favourite passages...
who stops and looks at
a street sign, turns,
hesitates and goes off
like the actor one often
feels: "Frowns,
looks at watch, goes
off" and in the sky
cloud words melt
and all run together.
- Two
Unexpected
as a tear when someone
reads a poem you wrote
for him: "It's this line
here...."
- The Bluet
July 22, 2022
Given the overwhelming pleasure and giddiness I feel reading the title poem to this book, I'm sad and embarrassed not to have read the book before. Schuyler has this very sweet, personable, and intimate note to his poetry. He handles the world with so much delicacy. It's like he's having a tender relationship with the whole world. And, as a reader, you get to share in that tenderness. And one of the biggest pleasures for me is the split between ultra-privacy, where it feels like Schuyler is just recording the world for his own benefit and conscious sharing, where it feels like Schuyler knows I'm along with him while he's recording. It's hard to explain this dynamic, really. But it makes me so happy and cozy. He's depressed. And he's funny. And he's cynical. And he's hopeful. And all these different stances towards the day just collage together.
January 18, 2024
“the anxious and unsatisfying years: goodbye, life.”
May 25, 2025
Realised on this read that in Hymn to Life (the long poem, an April poem), Schuyler is thinking of Eliot, so that "breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain" becomes:
"Out of the death breeding
Soil, here, rise emblems of innocence, snowdrops that struggle
Easily into life and hang their white enamel heads toward the dirt
And in the yellow grass are small wild crocuses from hills goats
Have cropped to barrenness. The corms come by mail, are planted.
Then do their thing: to live! To live! So natural and so hard
Hard as it seems it must be for green spears to pierce the all but
Frozen mold and insist that they too, like mouse-eared chickweed,
Will live."
What a response: a refusal of the way Eliot transforms the world into a numinous lament; instead, for Schuyler, there is only the immediate - and that is itself a reason for celebration, for cherishing life's interstices.
"One
Gull coasts by, unexpected as a kiss on the nape of the neck."
"The days slide by and we feel we must
Stamp an impression on them. It is quite other. They stamp us, both
Time and season so that looking back there are wide unpeopled avenues
Blue-gray with cars on them, parked either side, and a small bridge that
Crosses Rock Creek has four bison at its corners, out of scale
Yet so mysterious to childhood, friendly, ominous, pattable because
Of bronze."
"Out of the death breeding
Soil, here, rise emblems of innocence, snowdrops that struggle
Easily into life and hang their white enamel heads toward the dirt
And in the yellow grass are small wild crocuses from hills goats
Have cropped to barrenness. The corms come by mail, are planted.
Then do their thing: to live! To live! So natural and so hard
Hard as it seems it must be for green spears to pierce the all but
Frozen mold and insist that they too, like mouse-eared chickweed,
Will live."
What a response: a refusal of the way Eliot transforms the world into a numinous lament; instead, for Schuyler, there is only the immediate - and that is itself a reason for celebration, for cherishing life's interstices.
"One
Gull coasts by, unexpected as a kiss on the nape of the neck."
"The days slide by and we feel we must
Stamp an impression on them. It is quite other. They stamp us, both
Time and season so that looking back there are wide unpeopled avenues
Blue-gray with cars on them, parked either side, and a small bridge that
Crosses Rock Creek has four bison at its corners, out of scale
Yet so mysterious to childhood, friendly, ominous, pattable because
Of bronze."
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