A Few Days

by James Schuyler

Hardback book of poetry.

Genres: Poetry

91 pages, Paperback

Published October 12, 1985

Reviews

[Jacob Binder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think what most resonates with me about James Schuyler's poetry is its insistence on presentness. To Schuyler, every moment, every day, is a poem. Schuyler's poetry seeks meaning and futurity in the people and things-however mundane-around him. There is a romance to seeing the world that way, a romance that I long for.

[oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few days // are all we have. So count them quickly as they pass.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's the person, and what, in relation to the person, subsists with regard to the poem --surely, Schuyler's telling us, it's highly "personal," near-to-hand, your damn phone, fer crissake. Or a lit cigarette you forget you're holding. Thus, the little retardation that's the speaker checking out his animal persona: "You can see: buildings, dogs, people, | cement, etc. The summer city, where, | I suppose, someone is happy. Someone." The verse assumes the retard. Now they're a pair.

I quote from "Thursday," and I could quote this entire moving poem, but who knows but there's a volume of Schuyler, selected or collected, it would behoove you to purchase. So yeah, where would we be without this scaling of so human a testimony?

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

"...My
niece Peggy is at
camp in the Adirondacks so I am staying in her room.
It's essence of teenage
girl: soft lilac walls, colored photographs of rock stars,
nosegays of artificial flowers,
signs on the door: THIS ROOM IS A DISASTER AREA, and
GARBAGEDUMP.
'Some ashcan at the world's end...' But this is not
my family's story, nor
is it Molly's: the coon hound pleading silently for table
scraps. The temperature
last night dipped into the forties: a record for August
14th. There is a German
down pouff on the bed and I was glad to wriggle under
it and sleep the sleep
of the just. Today is a perfection of blue: the leaves
go lisp in the breeze.
I wish I were a better traveler; I love new places, the
arrival in station
after the ennui of a trip. On the train across the aisle
from me there was a young couple.
He read while she stroked the flank of his chest in a
circular motion, motherly,
covetous. They kissed. What is lovelier than young love?
Will it only lead
to barren years of a sour marriage? They were perfect
together. I wish
them well. This coffee is cold. The eighteen-cup pot
like most inventions
doesn't work so well. A few days: how to celebrate them?
It's today I want
to memorialize but how can I? What is there to it?
Cold coffee and
a ham-salad sandwich? A skinny peach tree holds no
peaches. Molly howls
at the children who come to the door. What did they
want? It's the wrong
time of year for Girl Scout cookies.
My mother can't find her hair net. She nurses a cup of
coffee substitute, since
her religion (Christian Science) forbids the use
of stimulants. On this
desk, a vase of dried blue flowers, a vase of artificial
roses, a bottle with
a dog for a stopper, a lamp, two plush lions that hug
affectionately, a bright
red travel clock, a Remington Rand, my Olivetti, the
ashtray and the coffee cup...."

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend wanted me to read Schuyler, so I complied by getting all of his books from the library. This is the one I grabbed first and I'm about to read another one. I had a strange experience reading this. I felt like I liked him. Would like to hang out with him. But I found his poems were not very poem-y. They read like journal entries--lots of very personal references and reactions to intimate surroundings. One line I love and won't soon forget was, "In the country you can take a walk without spending money."

[Diana Filar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection really turned around for me about halfway through when a few more stylistic and experimental poems started appearing right before the ultimate, long, titular masterpiece "A Few Days." If it hadn't been for the slog through free verse lyrical poems full of exclamation points and rhetorical questions in the beginning, I would have rated it higher.