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Days Of Wonder: New and Selected Poems – Well-Crafted Lyrics of Reverence and Joy Spanning Three Decades
Attesting to Grace Schulman's gifts for her craft, Days of Wonder collects verse spanning nearly three decades, including ten new poems and selections from the poet's four previous collections. Schulman's well-crafted lyrics contain equal portions of reverence and lament, praise and joy. Many of her poems communicate a sense of wonder at the beauty of the world, with references to painters and poets and religion. As William Stafford has written, Schulman "renews our faith in ourselves and in the language we use for finding each other."
- GenresPoetry
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Grace Schulman
35 books6 followersGRACE SCHULMAN is the author many acclaimed books of poetry, including Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. For her poetry she has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the Aiken-Taylor Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and three Pushcart prizes. Schulman is a distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She is a former director of the Poetry Center (1978–1984) and a former poetry editor of The Nation (1971–2006).
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 7, 2026
I had never heard of Grace Schulman but came across her poem, “American Solitude,” in a magazine and thought it was very good, one that built on the image of three abandoned gas pumps. I found this collection of her poems, about a hundred in all, many published previously, hoping to find more that I’d like. As with any collection of poems, some I liked more than others, but “American Solitude”, I thought, still stood out.
Schulman is an urban poet, many of her images coming from works of art so they ask for some cultural knowledge on the part of the reader. “American Solitude” is typical in that it has an opening epigraph from Marianne Moore (“the cure of loneliness is solitude”) and a first line that mentions a Hopper painting. The tanks are broken, the landscape overgrown, and the poem ends on a somber note:’
“. . .Shadows cut the road
before I drove off into the dark woods.”
The poem metaphorically points to other poems. The pumps no longer work, but they have roots in gas pools and recall former clam diggers, no longer on now empty beaches. The past echoes like this in many of her poems,one recalling her father whose dying words are in a Polish he has not used for years. Other fragments from the past talk about the writer’s immigrant Jewish forebears, “. . . trumpet notes that sang to one another./ secrets that unfurled like silver waves/ far out at sea . . .”
Another poem, “The Luxembourg Gardens”muses on a statue of Flaubert who stares out at passersby observing the smallest details, “. . . he must see everything. He lingers/ now on a woman combing yellow hair,/ and notices her chapped hands, baggy jeans . . .”
That could well describe Schulman who is always alert, not just to the past, but to present small events happening around her. “False Move” depicts a grackle which crashes into her window pane. She thinks it dead, but it unexpectedly rises and flies away, an experience of “wonder”, of which there are many in this book. In “Losses” a sense of grief exists with growth of awareness, the poem ending, “. . . just as the sea recedes, I grow with loss.” The recession of the sea exposes leached rocks and submerged deltas. Always, there is compensation.
In a laundromat, clothe spin together as doomed lovers. Grace Church’s steeple “still fishes the sky,” gargoyles on buildings “act out court murder scenes bloodied by falling suns,” “as real as asphalt on this long day,” in most of her poems there there is seeking of emotional reaction. A poem on ambulances ends:
“. . . one side is bright.
The other dark.
We praise it.”
In Schulman, praise for small things always hovers. Enpty gas pumps and beyond – a poet well worth the time to read. The book title is apt; these are days full of moments of wonder.
Schulman is an urban poet, many of her images coming from works of art so they ask for some cultural knowledge on the part of the reader. “American Solitude” is typical in that it has an opening epigraph from Marianne Moore (“the cure of loneliness is solitude”) and a first line that mentions a Hopper painting. The tanks are broken, the landscape overgrown, and the poem ends on a somber note:’
“. . .Shadows cut the road
before I drove off into the dark woods.”
The poem metaphorically points to other poems. The pumps no longer work, but they have roots in gas pools and recall former clam diggers, no longer on now empty beaches. The past echoes like this in many of her poems,one recalling her father whose dying words are in a Polish he has not used for years. Other fragments from the past talk about the writer’s immigrant Jewish forebears, “. . . trumpet notes that sang to one another./ secrets that unfurled like silver waves/ far out at sea . . .”
Another poem, “The Luxembourg Gardens”muses on a statue of Flaubert who stares out at passersby observing the smallest details, “. . . he must see everything. He lingers/ now on a woman combing yellow hair,/ and notices her chapped hands, baggy jeans . . .”
That could well describe Schulman who is always alert, not just to the past, but to present small events happening around her. “False Move” depicts a grackle which crashes into her window pane. She thinks it dead, but it unexpectedly rises and flies away, an experience of “wonder”, of which there are many in this book. In “Losses” a sense of grief exists with growth of awareness, the poem ending, “. . . just as the sea recedes, I grow with loss.” The recession of the sea exposes leached rocks and submerged deltas. Always, there is compensation.
In a laundromat, clothe spin together as doomed lovers. Grace Church’s steeple “still fishes the sky,” gargoyles on buildings “act out court murder scenes bloodied by falling suns,” “as real as asphalt on this long day,” in most of her poems there there is seeking of emotional reaction. A poem on ambulances ends:
“. . . one side is bright.
The other dark.
We praise it.”
In Schulman, praise for small things always hovers. Enpty gas pumps and beyond – a poet well worth the time to read. The book title is apt; these are days full of moments of wonder.
July 1, 2017
I thought I heard a phrase stab like a knife
and echo, unsung, uninscribed: praise life.
and echo, unsung, uninscribed: praise life.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews