James Schuyler

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Take But Degree Away

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Whole, humanly scaled satisfactions have almost disappeared from poetry in the present age. The studied avoidance of affectation preached and practiced in the workshops has produced much leaden whimsy and vers libre list-making, but little in the way of poetry. The added attraction of rarity, then, attaches to James Schuyler's work, work that is not of the first order in power or invention, but which nevertheless gratifies by its harmony and balance. These poems [in The Morning of the Poem] full of rueful good humor and always appropriate to their occasions, yield a kind of pleasure that seems destined, not many years hence, to be as much a memory as civil conversation or unpretentious cooking.

The shorter poems contained in the first half of this new book are, on the whole, somewhat thinner than Schuyler's earlier lyrics. Their tone is flatter, more reportorial, depending more on right understatement and modulations of tone than on the sometimes extravagant conceits that peppered his previous work. Still, Schuyler's commitment "merely to say, to see and say, things / as they are," and his evident joy in that task ("Words. So useful and / pleasant"), invest these poems with the charm of a closely and lovingly observed reality rendered in a language of engaging openness…. (pp. 299-300)

The centerpiece of this volume, "The Morning of the Poem," is a rich, loosely organized long poem that rambles on in a perfectly satisfactory fashion … until Schuyler has had his say, then stops. This is the sort of work that the general public read, when the general public read long poems: one that will amuse and instruct for as long as is desired, never losing its readability or generosity. The poem might be compared to the long poems of le Byron de nos jours, Kenneth Koch, in its good-natured digressiveness, but where Koch's scattershot tours de force seem to be one continual crescendo, Schuyler avoids climax altogether. There is little beginning, hardly an end, and in between no structure, only much writing of engaging good humor and sense…. (p. 300)

Schuyler's fear and frustrations enter the poem, but never assume greater dimensions than is their right. Schuyler occasionally teeters, but never quite succumbs to sentimentality or the confessional urge. He never completely oversteps the bounds of a certain propriety with the reader; he confides, rather than announces, his sorrows. Schuyler's best asset is his near-perfect realization of the nature of his own talent. The ease and harmony of his work are right reward for that self-knowledge. (pp. 300-01)

Vernon Shetley, "Take But Degree Away," in Poetry (© 1981 by The Modern Poetry Association; reprinted by permission of the Editor of Poetry), Vol. CXXXVII, No. 5, February, 1981, pp. 297-301.∗

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