Synopses & Reviews
" To John Ashbery Dear Fleur du Champ, I loved the Rops card; it reflected my general summer sentiments quite accurately. On the other hand, I would also love a letter. On the third hand, I am quite acquainted with your laziness, having often observed it in action. Does the fact that you don't mention the poems I sent mean you find them beneath mentioning, snarl? It's so hot and stupid here today, I could squeal. Translating a whodunit in the 16th arrondissement of Paris seems quite a preferable activity. Are you going to admit on the title page that you did it, or will it say, rendered by Jon Laurence or somesuch? Is it by Slezak and Negri, or whatever that team is called? I hope it's not a vile hi-brow one but a nice "Scream! she cried" type. I have had a terrible blow. How's that for an attention-getter? Sandy is moving rent-free into his brother's digs, which means I am stuck with the Aug. ughrent. Perhaps I will move back there just to get the good of it. Sandy says he found the sheets quite clean and never bothered to get your laundry out, which will come to a tidy penny. I trust you have not forgotten the five I mentioned you owed me; I know you are too broke to pay me, on the other hand, so am I.... 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 serveit, 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.
Synopsis
"An extraordinarily rich and compelling book, a wonder . . . the perfect companion to Schuyler's] brilliant and memorable poems."--Paul Auster
"James Schuyler's letters are all of a piece. . . . They have his virtues: wit, humor, intelligent observations about writing, writers, painting, and painters expressed off-handedly, bits of brilliant description of nature and weather, and a sense of the world lived in, sharply observed, and lovingly accepted for all that it is. All of a piece but with Schuyler's voice adjusted to different friends, pitched to their particular wavelengths. And, of course, his voice changes over the years as he ages and his correspondents extend beyond his contemporaries to younger friends." --William Corbett, from the Introduction
Synopsis
“An extraordinarily rich and compelling book, a wonder . . . the perfect companion to his brilliant and memorable poems.”—Paul Auster
Synopsis
Letters of James Schuyler that are a companion to his poems and the finest portrait of the poets of the New York School
Synopsis
Pulitzer Winner and first of New York Poets (Ashbery, O'Hara, Kock, Guest) have letters published.
Synopsis
Cultural Writing. Letters. James Schuyler, recipient of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for The Morning of the Poem, is among the first generation of New York School poets. 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. There are numerous letters to his great correspondents John 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 his death in 1991. "An extraordinarily rich and compelling book, a wonder"--Paul Auster.