A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

Groundbreaking biography of an often-overlooked poet.

Kernan, who previously edited James Schuyler’s Diary and was a close friend, offers up the first biography of the poet (1923-1991). It was in 1935 that seventh-grader Schuyler met Bernie Oshei, his “first real soulmate,” and began to explore his homosexuality. An AWOL incident in the Navy brought about an undesirable discharge that left him in a depressed state with nervous tremors. In 1944 he moved to New York City to room with a military buddy. Their friendship with Chester Kallman would lead them to Kallman’s partner, the poet W.H. Auden. Schuyler would type out Auden’s poems, which helped with his own poetry. He was enjoying life with a group of bright, gay, opera-loving men. After graduating from Columbia, he went to Italy to work on his writing and befriended other writers, including Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. Back in New York, he wrote more stories and poetry, published some pieces, and became friends with poets Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery. After a nervous breakdown got him admitted to a hospital, he returned, rejuvenated, to writing and published his first poem, ”Salute,” which Kernan nicely explicates, as he does with many of the poems. Schuyler was now officially part of the so-called New York School of poetry. He began finding work in museums, writing for Art News, and published a novel, Alfred and Guinevere, in 1958. His The Morning of the Poem won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. As much a social as literary biography, Kernan’s book describes in detail Schuyler’s many on-and-off personal and professional relationships with writers, artists, and musicians, his many, many moves, and his deteriorating health in the 1980s.

A bit on the dry side, but a welcome and heartfelt biography.