James Schuyler

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Poetry as Prose

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James Schuyler, who is a poet, has written a remarkable novel. A casual glance—at an illustrated page, at the cover, at the blurb—is likely to give one as false an idea of what his book is about as the New York Times book review section evidently had when it treated this exquisitely comic work of art as a children's book which was good fun [see excerpt above]. Alfred and Guinevere does, in fact, tell the story of a few months in the lives of two children, a brother and sister. Pride and Prejudice is about a dance, a carriage ride, some rural marriage arrangements; and Moby Dick is about a whale. Mr. Schuyler's book is witty, truthful, simple, lively, and musical. One has to go to the really best poems of our time to find writing with as much skill in language, rhythm, refrain, the whole paraphernalia of poetry, as one finds here. The whole aim of the book is poetic—as though its author had set out to write a novel which would never violate for moment his ear, his eye, his sensibility. The problem for poets writing novels is that they become bored (and so do readers), but Mr. Schuyler has transferred the excitements of poetry to his prose; something (witty or prosodic) is happening at every second. It is NOT, not at all, "poetic prose"—any more than is Jane Austen's. It is, rather, prose as poetry really should be: among other things fresh, surprising, artful, and clear; and with a great deal of its joy and shock arising from language…. (p. 321)

Schuyler's language makes one aware not only of what it describes, but also of language itself—of the word as a word among words—as poetry does, or should. His originality is in the way he uses this technique for the creation of comedy; musicality, as well as psychological accuracy, goes along with it…. Alfred and Guinevere is not an easy book to discuss; I laughed all the way through it for three readings in a row—and wholeheartedly, as one can only laugh at something that is also beautiful. (pp. 321-22)

The book consists wholly of dialogue and diary and is, among other things, a parody of the completely objective style. In its apparent simplicity it is related to the kind of pure, clear, conscious prose that one finds in some Gertrude Stein and in early Hemingway, but it has a humor and a music that are quite its own. (p. 323)

Kenneth Koch, "Poetry as Prose," in Poetry (© 1959 by The Modern Poetry Association; reprinted by permission of the Editor of Poetry), Vol. XCIII, No. 5, February, 1959, pp. 321-23.

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