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BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
Copley Square

BY JAMES SCHUYLER
Poems
Salute

(1960)

(1966)
Freely Espousing (1969)
May 24th Or So

A Sun Cab (1972)
The Crystal Lithium
Hymn to Life

(1972)

(1974)

The FireproofFloors ofWitley Court (1976)
The Morning ofthe Poem

(1980)

(1985)
Selected Poems (1988)
Collected Poems (1993)

A Few Days

Novels
Alfred and Guinevere (1958)

(with John Ashbery, 1969)
What's for Dinner? (1978)

A Nest ofNinnies

Poems and Prose
The Home Book

(edited by Trevor Winkfield, 1977)

Diaries
(1982)
For Joe Brainard (1988)
Early in 71

The Diary ofJames Schuyler (edited

Nathan Keman, 1997)

by

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/diaryofjamesschuOOschu

THE

DIARY

OF

JAMES SCHUYLER
EDITED BY

SANTA ROSA

NATHAN KERNAN

BLACK SPARROW PRESS 1997

THE DIARY OF JAMES SCHUYLER. Copyright © 1997 by the Estate
of James Schuyler.
EDITING, INTRODUCTION & NOTES. Copyright © 1997 by Nathan
Keman.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of
this publication may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from
the publiser except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical arti¬
cles and reviews. For information address Black Sparrow Press, 24 Tenth
Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95401.

Cover portrait of James Schuyler by Darragh Park.

Black Sparrow Press books are printed on acid-free paper.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Schuyler, James, 1923-1991
The Diary of James Schuyler / edited by Nathan Keman.
p,
cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-57423-025-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57423-026-3 (cloth trade :
alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57423-027-1 (deluxe cloth : alk. paper)
1. Schuyler, James—Diaries. 2. Poets, American—20th century—Diaries.
I. Keman, Nathan.
II. Title.
818’.5403—dc21
96-49338
CIP
[B]

For Joe Brainard

(1942-1994)

Table of Contents

Editor’s Introduction

9

Acknowledgements

21

The Diary of James Schuyler

27

James Schuyler: A Chronology

278

Appendix of Names

299

List of Illustrations

319

Two sections of photographs follow pages 100 and 196.

Introduction

“— to be purely a thought!”

For readers of his poetry, the idea of the Diary of James Schuyler
might almost seem like too much of a good thing. The diaristic
quality of his poetry has been noted by almost everyone who has
written about it, from Howard Moss to Wayne Koestenbaum,
Helen Vendler to Edmund White, and can already be inferred from
the titles listed in Schuyler’s Collected Poems, fifteen of which consist
of or include specific dates, such as “May 24th or So,” or “Today
July 26, 1965,” while a further 33 poems are titled with either a sea¬
son, a month, a day, or a time of day: “February,” “In Earliest
Morning,” “A Name Day,” “August Night.”
Many Schuyler poems record a sequence of days so that they
become, in effect, little diaries: “A few days,” “The Morning of the
Poem,” “Dining Out with Frank and Doug,” “A Vermont Diary”
and “The Cenotaph.” But most often, a Schuyler poem seems to
have been written at one sitting; the day itself is often the subject,
or as David Bergman has pointed out,1 the object of a poem (“I
think/ I will write you a letter,/ June day. Dear June Fifth,...”;
“Silver day/ how shall I polish you?”). Schuyler’s poems often
draw our attention to the idea of Day as the infinitely varied yet
unchanging, inexorable unit of passing time: “The day lives us and
in exchange/ We it” (“Hymn to Life”). The sense of passing time
pervades Schuyler’s work from the first words of his first published
poem, “Salute” (“Past is past,”) to the last poem in the last book of
new poems published in his lifetime: “A few days/ are all we have.

1 David Bergman, “Material Ecstasy: The Poetry of James Schuyler/' published in
Mouth of the Dragon, Vol. 2, No. 5, October, 1980.

9

So count them as they pass. They pass too quickly... ”
Schuyler’s love of historical diaries, particularly nineteenth
century English ones, is reflected in his poems and in his own
Diary. “My writing, my poetry, is enormously influenced by my
reading,” Schuyler said in an interview with Carl Little, adding,
I’m really much more of a reader than a writer. I particularly
like diaries, for instance, Francis Kilvert’s diary, in three vol¬
umes, I’ve read many, many times. It’s extremely visual. I’m
always reading in Thoreau’s diaries, and my favorite book is
the diaries of George Templeton Strong.

Some of Schuyler’s other favorite diarists were James Woodforde, Gilbert White, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Virginia Woolf.
What makes their diaries live, and what Schuyler valued in them,
in addition to beautiful language, has nothing to do with analytical
thinking or insight into topical issues of the past—though these
may be present—but are the mundane, chance details of daily life:
the same kinds of closely observed details that we find in
Schuyler’s own Diary and in his poetry.
Schuyler also loved memoirs. It was a memoir, Logan Pearsall
Smith’s Unforgotten Years, that first awakened him to the realization
that he too must become a writer: reading the book as a teenager,
Schuyler looked up from his backyard tent and saw the landscape
“shimmer.” Schuyler quotes at length in his Diary from Harry
Daley’s memoir, This Small Cloud, from Iris Origo’s War in Val
d’Orcia and from Boris Pasternak’s Safe Conduct; he extolls Charles
Darwin’s memoirs for their “simplicity” and “reticence of intima¬
cy.” Although Schuyler never wrote his own memoirs, one of the
characteristics of the Diary, as of Schuyler’s poetry, is the way
memories seem to rise abruptly out of the fabric of whatever else is
going on, like Proust’s “involuntary memories.”
Another rather nineteenth-century sort of book which Schuyler
enjoyed and which undoubtedly influenced his own writing was the
commonplace book. Perhaps the best-known modem example of
the genre is Auden’s A Certain World, published in 1970, which
2Carl Little, “An Interview with Janies Schuyler,” published in Agni, No. 37, 1993;
first published in Talisman, No. 9, Fall, 1992.

10

Schuyler must have known; he also enjoyed Iris Origo’s The
Vagabond Path. Schuyler made his own miniature commonplace
book, as it were, when he assembled a group of quotations and
remembered remarks to make “The Faure Ballade.” The many
excerpts from his reading that appear throughout the Diary give this
book, too, something of the character of a commonplace book, and
exemplify the collage technique that is so much a part of Schuyler’s
aesthetic. “I like an art where disparate elements form an entity,”
Schyler wrote, and so they do in his Diary, and in his long multi¬
valent poems like “The Morning of the Poem,” as much as in col¬
lage poems of purely “found” material, like “Walter Scott.”
1984
Yesterday, my postponed visit to Daniel: Dr. Daniel White
Newman. “Was your mother’s maiden name White?” “Why, yes,
it was!” Great delight expressed at my idle but insightful remark.
There were a lot of Whites, but no males, “Then I came along,” to

unknown and no work of his appeared in Locus Solus. Schuyler attended the first
New York production of the opera with Chester Kallman and John Ashbery in
1953.
223 “A needless Alexandrine ends the song,/ That, like a wounded snake, drags its
slow length along.” From Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism.”

149

the pleasure of all beholders. The day before he had gone to the
barber when he was pissed off about something and snapped, “Cut
it!” and off came every glorious curl! Thank God they will grow
back—but not a wise move on the part of a man who seems in
search of a mate! To cut off one of his greatest charms. I gained
two pounds—not nearly so much as I feared, so I didn’t get yelled
at (always the threat: on him it could look good). And I took a
check “in full” for the hospital visits: $5,500 plus. His face did light
up, as I anticipated. Now he may take a little winter vacation: he’s
entitled. One thing I did like about the hospital was having Daniel
dart in, all smiles and curls, every morning: quite made the day.

Wednesday, December 19, 1984

A week ago today I was out of it—it seems I went down into the
lobby and out into the street “unsuitably dressed”—naked? in my
undershorts?—and set the cat among the pigeons. Helena got me
to Dr. Newman’s, where I fell down some steps, and blacked out,
only coming to to realize I was once again in Beekman Hospital!
Old home week. One thing about a black out: it spares one the infi¬
nite ennui of “admitting,” and the pain of a spine tap, and the “just
lie still please” of x-rays. Daniel diagnoses what he names a
“micro-stroke,” confirmed by Dr. Foo, the only one who can really
read the scan. There is evidence of something physical having
taken place in the brain, and Daniel thinks I might have had a fulldress stroke except for the anti-coagulant medication I’ve been on
since my by-pass last spring. Dr. Foo came around and put me
through my paces: “Spell chair backwards” (which he pronounces
“cheer”). The first time I couldn’t, then I could. “Very good. You
much better.” And so I am. I feel as though I had had a catharsis.
And so I have.
Darragh thought Dr. Foo was my joke name for Dr. Kim! Sent
the latter $1000: one down and so many to go.

150

Thursday, December 20, 1984

Strange, not to have someone come barging in in the dark of
the morning saying, “I just want to draw a little blood, Mr.
Shooler.”
How well I slept, how well I slept, how well I slept: how well I
feel, how well I feel, how well I feel!
Darragh came by yesterday noon, to bring me Virginia
Woolfs224 Diary, Volume 5, for Christmas and to pinch out the
growing points on my parlor linden, except on the twin leaders. He
says mine is doing much better than his...

Saturday, January 5, 1985
Nearly the end of the first week of 1985 and all I’ve written is my
name in a book! But what a name, and in what a book.
Last night the giant flowered amaryllis (one of my Xmas pre¬
sents to myself, along with Eau Sauvage and a white poinsettia)
somehow fell over and lost a giant blossom: it looks all the better
for it! I quite like its simplicity.
Snow on the ground, but not heavy.
Tom, dear Tom is coming by: ::::::: :

Thursday, January 10, 1985
Sleep, sleep, sleep: great sleep. Tonight I want more—but I doubt
that I’ll get it. Well a day.
I think Tom has his phone off the hook—little beast. And so,
and so...

224 The five volumes of Virginia Woolfs Diaries, edited by Anne Olivier Bell and A.
McNeillie, were published from 1977 to 1984 and were favorite books of Schuyler’s
which he reread often.

151

Monday, January 14, 1985
Winter seems to go on and on—and here it is, only a little more
than three weeks into it! And I used to love cold and snow so
much. Perhaps everything seems better in the country.
Tom is coming over this afternoon (perhaps)—what with the
play he’s in225 and his working, I see him hardly at all. If he’s ever
in a Broadway hit, as he no doubt will be one day, I’ll go bananas.
But if he’s in a hit, I suppose he wouldn’t have to go on working at
Joe Allen’s. That might be a gain?
Now to get ready for Hy Weitzen—shave, shower, wash my
hair. Surprise, I already have! So I can spend a couple of hours
with the depressing last volume of Virginia’s diary. Such a waste!
Poor lovely lady.226

Tuesday, January 15, 1985
Martin Luther King’s birthday. The day he was shot it really
seemed like one too many. I had a fantasy in bed when I woke up
just now of coming out strong in my next book against assassins...
Spitting a little snow, but not cold enough for it to do anything
but melt.
The most beautiful of men, Mr. Thomas Paul Carey, was here
yesterday. But he has other playmates with whom he spends more
time than he does with me, which makes this old galoot cross. So
be it, be cross. Snarl.

225 “We Shall Not All Sleep,” a production of the Theater for the New City.
226 Woolf, who suffered from mental illness intermittently throughout her life, com¬
mitted suicide by filling her pockets with stones and walking into the river Ouse. In
his poem “Virginia Woolf,” Schuyler imagines speaking to her before “that fatal
walk: ‘I know you’re/ sick, but you’ll be well/ again: trust me: I’ve been there.’”

152

Thursday, January 17, 1985
Let it come down! The fluffy stuff, I mean: our friend Mr. Snow. I
love it: not quite enough to go out in it, as I once would have
rushed to do, but it’s nice to see it drawing its eiderdown along the
top of the balcony railing. But poor Helena has to hike over from
the bank at 5th Avenue and 20th.
Saw Daniel Newman yesterday. He lectured me on not getting
frostbite in my feet! “Daniel, only street people get frostbite.” “You
could get it waiting for a cab.” “In these socks?” Now I won’t see
him for a month.
And that fine young fellow Tom Carey came by, but the bad
boy is going to his folks in L.A. for ten days! I hate it and he hasn’t
even left yet.
And tomorrow my nice young assistant Bill de Noylles (sp?) is
coming to work for me. I like him very much, though not, I hasten
to add, like I do Tom!

Saturday, January 19\ 1985
More snow, small flakes, falling criss-cross on themselves. And
tonight it’s supposed to hit zero! “Supposed” means that was the
prediction on the 11 o’clock news last night by Channel 4’s A1
Roker.
A Clint Eastwood Americana type comedy (I guess) about
boxing and the mob. Let’s face it: the great Clint is no comic
genius, and why at his age do they keep featuring him with his shirt
off? On the other hand, an actor named William Smith (I think) is
quite a hunk: a delectable hunk.
But I meant to say in my weather report, the east French win¬
dow is up to its usual winter tricks. At the coldest part of a really
cold night, something freezes and contracts, and the window pops
open. One night this week the temperature hit 14, and when I
woke up, about 7:30, it was 14 indoors as well as out! Last year I
153

remember propping a chair against it. Time to start that anew, I
guess. Mostly, this place is heavily overheated indeed, and I have
to open the window.
John Ashbery got the Bollingen Prize. I’ve never begrudged
John one jot (or tittle) of his success and honors: he deserves them
all and I applaud. But once, just once, I’d like to get one of these
prizes first—then I’d like it to be instantly given to John. But I
don’t think there are any left, except the Nobel, and who’s worry¬
ing about that? Still, the Nobel is a nice hunk of cash.

Monday, January 21, 1985
The days lengthen: now light begins before seven. And at seven it’s
one degree below zero. Cold enough. But I always say how much I
like cold. It’s not really the cold I like so much, it’s the pretty
snow—and that we don’t have.

Thursday, February 7f 1985
The pink and white tyranny of a sunny, well-snowed upon Febru¬
ary morning. At least we don’t hear the dreaded words, “sleet,
changing to freezing rain.” Just pink sunlight, blue sky, whitest of
white snow.
Back, three days ago, from another week at Beekman Hospital.
Pneumonia this time: “If anybody asks you,” Daniel Newman
said, “You just had plain pneumonia, not any other kind.” I didn’t
get it at first, but somebody down there is always trying to foist an
AIDS diagnosis on me: at least two guys put in my chart that I had
the very much wrong kind of pneumonia: the kind that lately killed
America’s leading female impersonator, “Mr. Lynne Carter.”227

227 Lynne Carter (1924-1985), billed as “Mr. Lynne Carter.” In 1971, he became the
first female impersonator to star in a concert at Carnegie Hall.

154

But that hospital: I don’t even want to hear its name, much less
go near it!
Helena had had the flu all week, so Bill de Noyelles has been
working for me. What a find that boy is! He’s prompt and capable,
and a pleasure to have around.

Monday February^ 11, 1985

My life would be much simpler if I didn’t love Tom so much. I’m
thinking of simplifying things with a whack of the axe.
Now off to Hy Weitzen’s: Wednesday, Daniel’s: the round.

Tuesday, February 12, 1985
I wonder why I’m not deeply unhappy. The worst seems to be hap¬
pening: a rift between Tom and me. Perhaps I don’t really believe it
will happen: perhaps I hope Tom’s trip to California will somehow
smooth things over. I do know I’ll hate it if it does happen!
“Heaven help this heart of mind:” and bless my darling boy.

Wednesday, February 13, 1985
(My eyesight gets worse and worse.)
Tom bopped by yesterday morning after the gym (he works out
at the Y across the street from me). Everything seems Jake and my
fears, as usual, seem groundless. He looked so beautiful!—my
handsome friend. But on Sunday he’s going to California for ten
days: Marilyn, Dobe, Ollie, Bug, Melinda, Taddy, Marty Gish.. ,228
228 Respectively Marilyn (Fix) Carey, Harry Carey, Jr., Olive (Golden) Carey,
Patricia Olive Carey, Melinda (Carey) Menoni, Frances (Ludlum) Fix Rowley, and
Martin Lee Gish (b. 1951), Tom Carey’s best friend through high-school, and a
friend still.

155

Will I miss him! Are you kidding? Off to see Daniel today.

Thursday, February 14, 1985
St. Valentine's Day
Saw Daniel yesterday, who’s not very happy. He doesn’t want to
take another vacation by himself: “I’ve taken so many trips alone.
If I had a lover we could go lie on a beach and drink Pina
Coladas...” Poor Daniel, that so handsome a man should have to
go hungry. But finding a lover in the age of AIDS is not so easy.

Monday, February 18, 1985
Presidents ’ Day
Tom flew off to California—but I just wrote a poem about it229—
yesterday. Life seems strangely empty. Why strangely? How else
would it seem when all you love and hold dear goes away? The lad
of twenty-eight I knew is now a man of almost thirty-four! And I
have a nice birthday present lined up for him. So he’d better—go
on being himself.
A twinge of jealousy yesterday of Helena and Darragh going
off to “Eugene Onegin” while I stayed home and watched
Elizabeth Taylor in “Butterfield Eight.” But then, I’ve seen “Eu¬
gene Onegin,” so there.

Wednesday, February 20, 1985
After a good night’s sleep—uhm, stretch!
Not thinking about much except Tom, so very far away. I see
229 “Presidents’ Day, ‘85” (unpublished).

156

him in profile at the open window of a car, driving up the coast to
Santa Barbara to visit his Grandmother Ollie and, nearby, his sister
Bug. I wonder which side of the family had the looks? His moth¬
er’s, probably—the former Miss Fix. Funny how the old men die
but the old ladies carry on.

Friday, February 22, 1985

His birthday, and the day after Wystan Auden’s. It was always nice
that there was a holiday the day after Wystan’s annual birthday
party: a clear space in which to nurse one’s hangover! The great no
drinking bonus: no more hangovers. How they used to wreck my
life.
No Tom, no diary, no fun. But a week from today he’ll be here,
the rascal. Oh Babe!

Monday, February 25, 1985

Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Tomday! Bingo.

Wednesday, February 27, 1985

A cold silver morning, but on the whole February has been pretty
nice: bright days as warm as 70, no overcoats, hard on ski-ing. But
we have March to stumble through.
Tomorrow the dear little fellow—really, he’s quite big—comes
back from LA. So far not one letter, not one postcard. Pig lady, pig
lady, pig lady...
And tomorrow Helena goes off on a two week retreat (she’s a
Buddhist, of the Tibetan persuasion). Harold Talbott is going off to
157

Spain and is lending her his house in Marion on Cape Cod. I’m
glad for her. Her religion is what means most in her life. I know it
will be wonderful.
And I, what am I doing? Going up to the Metropolitan to see
the Caravaggios and works by i Caravaggisti. So there.
We must buy coffee! We must buy light bulbs! And soon.

February 28, 1985
T Day: but at 7:30 in the morning, where is the little rascal? In the
air? in a limo, on his way to Third Street? Still in Sherman Oaks,
eating waffles? At 3:30 in the morning? Not bloody likely. Oh well,
I’ll hear in good time, somehow or other...
A sweet card from him yesterday, that said, “I love you love
you love you.” And I love him love him love him.
February, that mangled month, grinds to a halt in a shower of
sunshine.

March

/,

1985

Helena goes and Tom comes back—late yesterday afternoon. I
haven’t seen him, but I will this morning after he works out at the
gym. Ollie is fine but his father is in a state: “I’ll tell you about it
when I see you.” A fine broth of a boy (soon to be a thirty-four year
old boy.)
Funny sleeping pill that sometimes lets me sleep so well, as wit¬
ness last night. But why nightmares riddled with anxiety? I thought
I had outgrown that.

230 “The Age of Caravaggio,” an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from
February 5 through April 14, 1985.

158

Monday, March 4, 1985
Tom, the Babe, came to see me. Beautiful. He put on weight when
he quit smoking three months or so ago, but now he’s lost most of
it: no goozle under his chin: though there was seen to be a thicken¬
ing of his waist when his sweatshirt rode up. Tom thinks it’s funny
that I always want to see his navel; but it’s a lovely navel. And he’s
given up sugar: no three spoons in his coffee, no six cokes a day.
He’s given up junk, booze, cigarettes, and now, sugar. What next?
Me? But he says he’s coming to see me today.
Bill is doing well with Helena away. Nothing much is going
on...

Tuesday, March 5, 1985
At six AM the heavy gray bums a heavier blue. Rain, water drops
clinging to the balcony.

Saturday, March 161985
St. Patrick's Eve
Back yesterday from a week at Beekman Downtown hospital. This
time, aspirin poisoning—I overdosed. So now I’m cut to one tablet
a day, for ever and ever.
Tom came to see me in the hospital last Monday, and again
yesterday morning. What a good boy! I do love him.
And that nice Jimmy McCourt has put me into Kaye Wayfaring
in “Avenged,”', well not me, quotes from “Hymn to Life.”231 Just
where I’d like it to be. Such a talented lad.
And I feel good.
231 The book ends with the opera singer, Mawrdew Czgowchwz, sight-reading a (fic¬
tional) musical setting of “Hymn to Life.”

159

Monday, March 18, 1985
My boy came by yesterday, handsomest man in three counties.
And so blond! He still hasn’t taken off all the extra weight he put
on when he quit smoking, but it will gradually come off. [...] It’s
odd, but most of what went on seems to have settled in his thighs.
They must go back to normal: I love those thighs.
Helena is back from her retreat, with bad news about her apart¬
ment sharer. Charlie Martin was beaten nearly to death a week ago
on East 10th Street between B and C. He was concussed, and does¬
n’t remember anything about the attack. As usual, he won’t go
near a doctor or let Helena do anything for him. What an odd ball.
In the middle of reading Alice Notley’s play,232 which he’s
going to be in, Tom burst into tears, thinking about his fucked up
Dad. His trip home wasn’t very happy, I’m afraid, except of course
for seeing his sister Bug and his grandmother Ollie. Tom’s first
memory is of nearly drowning in Gregory Peck’s233 swimming
pool. Ollie fished him out. No wonder he loves her! What a Holly¬
wood baby to have that for a first memory! And even better, he
knows that he was conceived at the actress Eve Arden’s234—Our
Miss Brooks. Be a star Tom, be a star.

232 “Anne’s White Glove,” by Alice Notley was commissioned by Ada Katz for The
Eye and Ear Theater and produced at La Mama, with sets by Jane Dixon. The play
is autobiographical and evokes Notley’s response to the death of her husband, the
poet Ted Berrigan. Tom Carey played Berrigan’s ghost, an emotionally trying role
since he had been a close friend of Berrigan’s.
233 The actor Gregory Peck (b. 1916) and his wife were friends of Tom Carey’s
parents.
9 “XA

Eve Arden (bom Eunice Quedens; 1907[?]—1990), film and television actress, is
best known for her role as “Our Miss Brooks” in the radio and television series of
that name, and was nominated for an Academy Award as supporting actress in
“Mildred Pierce” in 1945. She was a friend of both of Tom Carey’s grandmothers.

160

Tuesday, March 19, 1985
I dreamed I was trying to reassure John A. about the danger of rid¬
ing the subway. His main concern was about lead-based paint flak¬
ing off and getting into his food. I told him I understood the
subway had been freshly painted, but he wasn’t buying that. Then I
said I didn’t think they used lead-based paint anymore: but he was¬
n’t buying that either. All in all, I didn’t do too well.
And now I’m having dinner with John tomorrow night—for
the first time in how long? I do love “the little nose picker,” as
Frank used to call him.
And now off to see Hy Weitzen and try to make sense of my
aspirin OD.

Wednesday, March 20, 1985
I don’t really feel like writing here today, but I can’t let the first day
of spring pass unsaluted: welcome, Spring!

Friday, March 22, 1985
“A Cold Spring” is what we’re having: we’re honoring Elizabeth
Bishop’s memory.235
Once again I’m getting pissed off with Tom: he isn’t seeing me
often enough, not to mention calling me often enough. Of course,
it isn’t really his fault (altogether), since he’s in Alice’s play, and
when he isn’t working he’s rehearsing. This too will pass.
A very pleasant get together with John A., Darragh and Joe

235 Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), American poet whose work Schuyler greatly
admired. A Cold Spring, is the title of Elizabeth Bishop’s second book of poems, pub¬
lished in 1955, and of the first poem in the book.

161

Brainard on Wednesday night. John’s gorgeous new apartment is
only $675 a month! Views to Jersey. We ate at a tiny restaurant
around the comer at 21st and 8th Avenue called (I think), Onini’s.
Good, though not so good as Lombardi’s: but a hell of a lot handi¬
er than Spring and Mulberry. Of the foursome I, though the oldest,
was the least gray: I like that: a year ago I expected to be snow
white by now. And what did the assembled beauty queens talk
about? AIDS, of course.

Monday, July 22> 1985
Well, this has been [a] lapse!
And I know why.
But you don’t.
Back Sunday night from a three day weekend at Darragh’s lit¬
tle farmhouse. I thought it would be much cooler there than in the
city, but when we got off the train at 12:01 on Friday it must have
been ninety. But not at D.’s, who is near the shore. And in the
evening a breeze came up so sleep was fine.
Tom sunbathed at the beach, Darragh painted and I wrote (3
poems, the first in aeons) and read that very funny book, The Diary
of a Nobody.236

D. is a vegetarian, which always suggests lackluster food to me:
on the contrary: he’s a great cook and each meal was a triumph
over the last. We won’t mention the mango ice cream, a no-no for

236 “Tom and Darragh and Oriane and I...” (unpublished); dated July 19, 1985) and
“In the Nut Tree’s Shade” (unpublished; dated July 21, 1985) are two poems written
over that weekend.
The Diary of a Nobody, a novel by George and Weedon Grossmith, first appeared
as a serial in Punch and in book form in 1892. In a letter of December 16, 1968[?],
John Ashbery mentions “ ...The Diary of a Nobody which I love—Michel Thurlotte
asked if we had been influenced by it in ‘Nest’.” Ashbery remembers that Schuyler
had already read The Diary of a Nobody by the time they began A Nest of Ninnies.

162

me, which was delicious. Then the first really fresh raspberries of
the season! my favorite of all food.
A visit to the studio, where not much was on view: mostly a
study for a double portrait (a commission) with chow. I liked it, a
very interesting composition.
I greatly admire Darragh’s paintings, but if I made a criticism it
would be for less carefully composing and more succulence in the
brushwork, such as one sees in Manet (the bunch of asparagus.)
And this applies, sometimes, to color. D’s favorite painting is
Vermeer’s “Woman in a Red Hat”: I’d like to see more of that in
his own pictures. But this isn’t meant as “heavy” criticism: I love
the pictures as they are.
Me: “Darragh, may I ask how you happened to become a veg¬
etarian?” D: “You may and you have.” But I didn’t understand
this time, either...
Tom got sunburned on his back, and I applied after tan: “I
guess that’s as near as I’ll get to ever having sex with him,” as I told
Hy Weitzen. The fact that we love each other is ample...
For the Long Island Railroad the trip back was a miracle: the
train came two minutes after we reached the station: we had parlor
car seats: the air conditioning worked: the train was express from
Westhampton (cutting out nearly an hour of travel time); the con¬
nection was waiting at Jamaica; we didn’t sit for hours in the tun¬
nel (always my torture), and Tom got the first cab he hailed.
Tom was looking more than usually like Phoebus Apollo. At
34 he is twice as handsome as at 28, when I met him. I think he’ll
be one of those men who, like Cary Grant, only get better. I wish I
were going to be here to see him at 80.

July 22, 1985

2

The other night, consumed with ennui, for the first time in my life I
watched a baseball game from start to finish: the All-Stars game
from Minneapolis. I like the way the players are always groping
themselves (do they all have jock itch?) and slapping each other on
163

the butt. But my pash, Gary Carter, the catcher for the Mets, had
an inflamed knee and couldn’t play. But there were plenty of other
hunks, although Goose Gossage, I’m afraid, “is not fair to outward
view.”237
Oh. There is a famous Florentine portrait of a man with a dis¬
eased nose—swollen and pitted—with his little son or grandson.238
On the train coming back last night for the first time I saw a man
who suffered from that condition, so much so that it was painful to
look at him. Deformity doesn’t usually bother me, but this, I’m
sorry to say, really got to me. One would imagine plastic surgery
could do something about it. But how would I know? I pitied him.

Tuesday, July 23, 1985
Tuesday, bloody Tuesday. Now why do I say that? And what busi¬
ness of yours is it how I feel about Tuesday? Hmmm?
Just wrote a poem with a title I like, “Horse-Chestnut Trees,
Roses, and Hate.” In honor of the beast who bought and raped 49
South, Fairfield’s Southampton house.239

237 Goose Gossage (b. 1951), a relief pitcher for the New York Yankees, and later
with the San Diego Padres. He wore a shaggy blond Fu Manchu moustache.
“She is not fair to outward view/ As many maidens be,/ Her loveliness I never
knew/ Until she smiled on me...” Hartley Coleridge, “Song.”
238 “Portrait of an Old Man with a Young Boy” by Domenico Ghirlandaio
(1449-1494), which is in the Louvre, is famous partly because Marcel Proust found
in it a resemblance to his acquaintance the Marquis de Lau, which he then trans¬
posed, in Swann’s Way, into a resemblance that Swann discovers between “the color¬
ing of a Ghirlandaio,” and “the nose of M. de Palancy.”
239 Schuyler wrote to Joe Brainard on July 29, 1985, “I called on Anne Porter... And
I was put into a tantrum by the way the new owner of Fairfield’s house has cut down
trees and uprooted my roses and put in the tackiest suburban ‘foundation planting’
one could imagine. It inspired me to write a poem called ‘Horse Chestnut Trees,
Roses and Hate,’ in which I put a curse on him. I expect him to keel over any day
now.” The poem was published in The New Yorker (June 8, 1987) as “HorseChestnut Trees and Roses.” See the entry for September 28, 1985, and note.

164

It’s getting light out, gray-blue-gray. And the parlor linden
Darragh gave me now o’er tops the French windows. It has an
alarming amount of leaf-drop; but Darragh assures me that’s the
nature of the beast.
I know why it’s bloody Tuesday: no giant lime tree, no butter
nut tree, no pond, no Tom, no Darragh...
I wonder if I feel like whacking off? Guess not, but still, I’m a
dirty old man. Now that’s something I never do when I go visiting.
And I hate to move my bowels anywhere but my very own john.
But piss: I can piss anywhere, and often do.
My secret shame: that I wet the bed (not every night) until I fell
in love with Paul Sipprell240 at 16, when I stopped, period: give or
take a couple of drunken accidents; but those don’t count.
And on that savory note, folks, I’ll take my leave.

Wednesday, July 24, 1985
The big thing about today is that it is Darragh’s birthday: many
happy returns, finest of fellows! Remember, today you’re king of
the world.
As for me, I’m in love with my air conditioner this hot and
muggy summer. It’s just like Maine in here, the kind of summer
day we all wore sweaters and had a big log fire at night.
Nothing new, except that yesterday I was dunned three times:
AT&T, Beekman Hospital, and Dr. Foo. I feel badly about the lat¬
ter, who is both a sweetie and a great doctor. I told one and all, “In
September...” And what then? Bankruptcy, here I come.
And yet I’m feeling really very happy. Must be spending three
days with Tom.

240 There is a long section in “The Morning of the Poem” about Paul Sipprell, “The
very first, Paul, the one in high school...”

165

Thursday, July 25, 1985
The sun goes in, the sun comes out, and hurricane Bob has been
down-graded to a tropical storm. Will it come here? I hope so.
On Monday Nancy Crampton241 is coming to photograph me.
I wish I felt more personable. Perhaps I’ll go out and negligently
lean on the balcony balustrade...
I wonder, I wonder: I wonder whether I’ll carry through what I
have it in mind to do?

Saturday July 27, 1985
Thunder and hghtning in the night. I never thought I’d come to
enjoy a good rollicking thunder storm, but I do. Safe inside, that is.
I no longer put my head under the pillow!
Talked to Helena yesterday at her parents’ home in County
Wexford. I get a great charge out of trans-oceanic telephoning: perhaps the feeling Cyrus Field had when the transatlantic cable
first did its stuff.
Now off to see Daniel, who will give me merry hell for having
put on weight, when I promised to lose it. Oh the horrors of “Lean
Cuisine.”
r\ * r\

July 28, 1985
I don’t understand the motions of the sun: I thought it never shone
into north-facing rooms, but every morning, soon after rising, it
241 Nancy Crampton is a photographer working on an ongoing series of photographs
of writers.
242 Cyrus Field (1819-1892), American industrialist and inventor who laid the first
transadantic cable.

166

illuminates the recesses of my two French windows. But mostly I
live, as I read in Diego Giacometti’s243 obituary, “in a town into
which the sun did not shine three months of the year.”
How often I wake up feeling that I’d like to write a poem, but
no words of my own come into my mind: those that do are
Vaughan’s:
They are all gone into the world of light
And I alone sit lingering here
Their very memory is clear and bright
And my sad thought doth clear
And I wonder how accurate that is?244 Me memory for poetry is
zilch.
Yesterday is a day I’m not going to think about, much less dis¬
cuss. Enough to say, I was as cross as two sticks.
Is it possible my favorite poem is Coleridge’s “Frost at Mid¬
night”? It may be true, and if it isn’t, so what?

July 29, 1985
Yesterday I said I wanted to write a poem but couldn’t. Later I
took a nap (that great institution), woke up and wrote one, lay

243 Diego Giacometti (1902-1985), Swiss-French artisan and furniture designer.
Michael Brenson’s obituary of Giacometti in the New York Times, July 17, 1985,
mentions the Bergell Valley in the Italian-speaking section of Switzerland where
Diego Giacometti and his brother, the sculptor Alberto Giacometti, grew up: “For
three months each year, Stampa, the hamlet that was the Giacomettis’ home, was
without sun.”
244 Henry Vaughan (1621 or 1622-1695), English poet; twin brother of the alchemist
Thomas Vaughan. Schuyler quotes the first stanza of an untided poem (or “hymn”)
from Vaughan’s Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1650; enlarged
1655). Schuyler omits punctuation, modernizes the spelling of “ling’ring,” substi¬
tutes the word “clear” for “fair” in the third line, and changes “thoughts” to
“thought” in the fourth line.

167

down to read and got up another. I suspect both of being stinkers
and have no inclination to look at them right now. And yet, there
are those pleasant, if rare, occasions when what had seemed
designed by a Higher Power for the ash can turns out to be not so
far below the norm as all that. It never hurts to keep one’s hand in,
and there have to be rifts before you start loading them with gold.
Or is the word ore?245
I’m still pissed off, but for different reasons—or for the old rea¬
sons plus new ones. Forget it. I wish I could.
I wish I had one hundred brand new books to read.

July 30, 1985

Sweet Catullus’s all but island, olive silvery Sirmio...246
When he felt like it, Wystan could set the cat among the
pigeons: I remember a review in which Desmond MacCarthy
foamed because W had said—in print—that Tennyson was the
most musical of English poets, and the stupidest.247
I love Tennyson, and he is indeed most marvelously musical,
but sometimes it seems a little Cecile Chaminade.248 Surely WS
245 “You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your
magnanimity and be more of an artist, and ‘load every rift’ of your subject with ore,”
wrote John Keats in a letter to Shelley, August 16, 1820, criticizing the latter’s verse
drama, “The Cenci.”
246 This is the last line of Tennyson’s “Frater Ave Atque Vale,” one of the poems that

W. H. Auden included in A Selection from the Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published
in 1944.
247 Desmond MacCarthy (1877-1952), English literary and dramatic critic, associ¬
ated with the Bloomsbury group. He was knighted in 1951.
In his introduction to A Selection from the Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Auden
wrote, “[Tennyson] had a large, loose-limbed body, a swarthy complexion, a high,
narrow forehead, and huge bricklayer’s hands; in youth he looked like a gypsy; in
age like a dirty old monk; he had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was
also undoubtedly the stupidest...”
248 Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944), French pianist and composer of salon music.

168

would not have stooped to guff about “the murmuring of immemo¬
rial elms”—or however it goes—elms which turned out not to be
so immemorial after all.249
For music, I prefer the vintage Keats bottled: “Season of mists
and mellow fruitfulness... ”250 Bright star! Indeed.
“Does Fairfield Porter still walk down Madison Avenue wear¬
ing white sneakers and talking to himself?”
Fairfield: “I can never believe that Larry Rivers does anything
except for some sadistic reason of his own.”
And Larry’s first wife,251 who tried to flush a perfume bottle
down the toilet.
And all I can remember Guy Burgess telling me is that Jack
London is America’s greatest writer.

249 From a portion of “The Princess/’ often published separately as “Come Down, O
Maid”: “...The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/ And murmuring of innumer¬
able bees.”
Dutch elm disease has killed many of the majestic old elm trees in the northeast
United States. In “Beaded Balustrade,” (A Few Days) Schuyler, remembering
Southampton, writes, “There, where/ I dream of, the elms are gone (Dutch/ elm
blight)...”
250 This is the first line of Keats’s poem “To Autumn.” “The Ode to Autumn is a spe¬
cial favorite of mine,” wrote Schuyler in a letter to Fairfield Porter on June 30,1955.
“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—” is the first line of Keats’s “Last
Sonnet.”
251 Augusta Burger. She and Rivers were married in 1944.
252 Guy (Francis de Money) Burgess (1910-1963), British Foreign Office official and,
with Donald Maclean, Harold Philby and Anthony Blunt, part of a ring of Soviet
spies who had been recruited at Cambridge University. Burgess met W.H. Auden in
early 1951 when Burgess was working in Washington, and it is possible Schuyler
met him through Auden. When Burgess defected to the Soviet Union in May, 1951,
it was first thought he might be en route to visit Auden on Ischia.
Jack London (1876-1916), American novelist, author of over twenty books,
many of them set in the Klondike, many of them with socialist themes.

169

January 31, 1985
(orperhaps it's July!)
A white night. And during it I thought of so many things: all gone,
gone with the snows of year after next.
Nancy Crampton came and photographed me yesterday.
Charming and a deal less the heavy professional than Mary Ellen
Mark253—a remark which is merely a fact, not an expression of dis¬
like for MEM.
Unfortunately, she speaks in a tone that makes Anne Porter
sound like Ezio Pinza:254 so being in one of my deaf phases I did a
good deal of smiling and nodding at what I hoped were the right
moments. I did a lot of standing in the door to the balcony, until
my leg began to hurt then I sat in poses on that spread on the
“other” bed, in front of the painting of Bill Berkson with
dick255until my back began to ache. I guess she likes an uncluttered
look: she took down picture after picture, book after book, the
lamp, the phone, until she started for the fragile sheet on which my
poem “Salute” is written in Chinese. I said, “No,” so we got on
with it. Finally I realized there was no reason why I shouldn’t say
“My attention span has run out,” so I said, “My attention span is
about to run out.” She said, “This is the last frame,” and that was
that.
While she was packing up I called Tom who said, “Are you
through?” “Yes. Miss Crampton is packing up.” “Stop calling her
Miss Crampton. Call her Nancy.” I wanted to say, “I can’t call her
Nancy because that’s what I call you, Nancy,” but under the cir¬
cumstances I couldn’t.
I expected to talk to Daniel yesterday about the blood test he
'yc'i

Mary Ellen Mark (b. 1940), documentary and portrait photographer.
254 Ezio Pinza (1892-1957), opera singer, who also starred in the Broadway musical
“South Pacific” in 1949. He makes an appearance in one of Schuyler’s “Last
Poems,” “Over the hills”: “Pinza/ looked up at Sallie/ and sang,/ ‘Some enchanted
evening...’”
'y c c

Schuyler owned a nude portrait of Bill Berkson by George Schneeman.

170

took on Saturday. But when I got through to Betty he had left and
the test was not back from the lab. So I won’t know until today
some time after one-—and no doubt there lies the explanation for
my white night.

Saturday, August 3, 1985
I was filled with delight last night—how disgusting, a rhyme—
when I realized that anyone who ever wants to write my
biography will have his/her work cut out for her/him, since vir¬
tually no documentation or juvenilia exist. There is The Birth
Certificate, The First Grade Report Card (F in all subjects: I
was a late bloomer),256 The Passport:257 and? No diplomas, no
degrees,258 maybe some postcards and a letter or two... then I had
three stories published in Accent259 along with Frank’s “ThreePenny Opera,”260 the poem behind my poem, “Salute” (it’s the
256 Schuyler’s first grade report card, from the John Adams School in Washington
D.C. is preserved in the James Schuyler Papers in the Mandeville Special
Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego. Over three marking
periods of the winter semester of 1930-31 his grade in Reading advanced from F to
D; in Oral English, from B to A; in Writing, from D to C; and in “Hand Work,”
from B to A. His “self reliance” was found in need of improvement in the first mark¬
ing period, but had apparently improved in the second and third. Schuyler was pro¬
moted to the second grade on January 30,1931.
257 Passports dated 1953, 1975 and 1980 are in the Schuyler Papers in San Diego.
Schuyler did not go abroad after his 1954-55 trip to Europe with Arthur Gold and
Robert Fizdale, although he spoke seriously of going to visit Anne Dunn Moynihan
in the south of France in 1975 and in 1989.
258 Schuyler attended Bethany College in West Virginia for two years (1941-1943)
but did not earn a degree.
259 Accent—A Quarterly of New Literature, Summer, 1951. Schuyler's stories are titled
“A Memory Haunts Me,” “The Mouse Party,” and “The Forty-First and Youngest
Brother.” They have not been reprinted.
260 “I had those three short stories published in Accent, and when it came out, and
after I had finished reading my own things over and over, I read the other things,
and I was very excited by a poem called The Three Penny Opera’ by someone

171

matter of where the line turns), met John Ashbery, Jane Freilicher,
Fairfield Porter, Edwin Denby, Rudy Burckhardt (through his sis¬
ter, Helen), and other geniuses and the rest is history...
There is a hilarious piece in this week’s New Yorker called “Yo,
Poe”. It concerns Sylvester Stallone’s wish to play the real Poe who
was not a kinky alcoholic—but the big stuff was Whitney Balliett’s
(why can’t I spell that name?) piece on Peggy Lee,261 who is in
town, around the comer, singing tonight, and I won’t be there: you
better believe I’m pissed off. But I am going to own and play her
latest LP very, very soon. Goody. “The Sorcerer’s Helper”262begins
to pall.
Virgil T[homson] to Sauguet,263 issuing from a NY jazz club:
“Elle n’est-pas artiste,” in definitive tones. They had been listening to
Lady Day.264
Edwin Denby told me that.

called Frank O’Hara.” (Carl Little, “An Interview with James Schuyler”). Schuyler
met O’Hara soon afterwards, and wrote “Salute,” his first published poem, in
Bloomingdale Hospital in the fall of 1951.
261 Whitney Balliett (b. 1926), a writer for The New Yorker since 1951, has written
fourteen books on jazz. Peggy Lee (b. 1920), the popular singer and songwriter, has
written or helped write over 500 songs.
262 “l’Apprenti sorcier,” a musical composition by Paul Dukas (1865-1935) ubiqui¬
tous on classical radio stations and usually translated as “The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice.”
Henri Sauguet (bom Henri Poupard) (1901-1989), French composer; one of the
many contemporary composers commissioned to write works for Arthur Gold and
Robert Fizdale.
264 Billie Holiday (1915-1959), American jazz singer, and very much an artist.

172

Sunday, August 5, 1985
Brook Benton’s265 “Do Your Own Thing” is just the music I want
right now, and the three Teddy Wilson266 discs with Mildred
Bailey267 (who once spoke to me at Cafe Society Uptown:268 “Take
it easy, Sonny,” she said as I stumbled slightly on the stair (the can
was upstairs) and swept down in a brown evening suit studded
with brass nail heads and sang “Oh Mama Won’t You Scrap Your
Fat,” and the boys stood up and joined her: it was a lively number
and then things got a lot better)—nor will my day be ruined when
Bill [de Noyelles]brings the latest Peggy Lee. Goody.
I watched “The Fabulous Dorsey Brothers” only because they
were playing themselves: imagine my surprise when the words
“with Helen O’Connell, Ziggy Elman, Bunny Berigan” and other
wizards: and Art Tatum.269 Art Tatum! It was true the plot of the
265 Brook Benton (bom Benjamin Peay; 1931-1988), pop singer and songwriter.
Benton had four songs in the top 20 in 1959. His signature tune, “A Rainy Night in
Georgia,” was recorded in 1970.
266 Teddy Wilson (b. 1912), jazz pianist. In the early 40s, Wilson’s sextet played reg¬
ularly at Cafe Society Uptown and Downtown. In “A few days,” Schuyler calls him
“The Alicia de Larrocha of the hot piano.” In “Shaker,” written on August 3, 1985,
Schuyler compares the way “each/ note is so clear” in Wilson’s playing to Shaker
“pegs to hang/ chairs on.”
267 Mildred Bailey (1907-1951), jazz singer. This recollection is also told in the poem
“Let’s All Hear It For Mildred Bailey!”
268 Cafe Society Uptown and Cafe Society Downtown were jazz clubs in New York
from 1938 to 1947. According to Whitney Balliett, they were, “the best night clubs
New York has ever known. They were also revolutionary, for it was [Barney]
Josephson’s intent to present integrated entertainment to integrated audiences in the
pleasantest possible surroundings.” (Whitney Balliett, New York Notes. New York:
Da Capo Press, 1977). In a letter to Tom Carey (October 7,1988) Schuyler wrote: “I
always enjoyed myself a lot more at CSU than Downtown, where the entertainment
was apt to be by people like the folk singer Josh White with odious songs like “I
Gave My Love a Cherry,” sung very, very slowly, so the meaning got across, Eddie
Hayward playing “Begin the Beguine” with a boogie beat... ”
269 “The Fabulous Dorseys,” was made in 1947 with trombonist Tommy Dorsey
(1905-1956) and his brother Jimmy Dorsey (1904-1957), a saxophone and clarinet
player, as two quarreling bandleaders who are eventually reunited. The others

173

movie is about how to prevent the audience from hearing any
music: mostly it succeeded: then Poster: Art Tatum: eventually,
Art Tatum, and it was beautiful: then authentic musicians stood
[and] jammed. It was worth it.

Sunday, August 18, 1985
titles:
Pious Ejaculations
Inscrutable Wisdom Stone
The Master of the Controlled Accident
and others
While I was visiting my home-away-from-home for a brief
stay270—what Tom calls, “It’s a retreat but it’s not a religious
retreat,” only mine was and so was his so what’s he talking
about?271—the parlor linden accomplished its appointed task:
behind its spurious complaint of leaf-drop lay the disclosure
of what Williams called the alphabet of the trees which now
fills without hiding my west French window.272 A piece of
named are all famous jazz performers. In a review in the January, 1959 Art News,
Schuyler praised Gandy Brodie’s paintings for “interspersing jazz notes of color as
lightly as Art Tatum used to play.”
Schuyler may be referring to Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Helena Hughes had gone
to Ireland to visit her family for several weeks at the end of July, leaving Bill de
Noyelles in charge of Schuyler. On about August 5, de Noyelles started to notice
that Schuyler was acting strangely, was beginning to have a nervous breakdown in
fact. Immediately on Helena Hughes’s return, Schuyler went to the hospital.
Evidently, he was out of St. Vincent’s by August 18, although on August 23 (or
22nd; see below) he writes of being “welcomed back”: possibly from the hospital.
271 On August 5, Tom Carey, who was beginning to explore the possibility of a reli¬
gious life, went on his first religious retreat, to an Episcopalian convent in Brewster,
N.Y.
272 The reference is to William Carlos Williams’s poem “Botticellian Trees”: “The
alphabet of/ the trees// is fading in the/ song of the leaves...”

174

wildness to live with: from what improbable jungle?
At the hour when sunlight steals in and coats the recessed pan¬
eling with glow, its leaves are transpicuous: big, light green, its
branches rising from the base in an expanding errancy. Beyond and
through: the urban clarity of rusticated stone and six-light win¬
dows, the Victorian fancy of chrysanthemums crudely reduced to
iron: the balustrade of “My” balcony.273

Thursday, August 23, 1985 [sic]274
The utter improbability of me sitting here typing my equally
unlikely diary (I am keeping it with malice aforethought: i.e. I
would like to make some money out of my writing for a change: oh
well, winning an extra thousand for a long poem in a non-long
poem contest. The Paris Review!275 Isn’t that where something good
always happens? As usual I have locked myself inside a paren.
Must bust loose: not always the best idea in life or anywhere else).
Where was I?
Let’s not talk about that. Yesterday I was welcomed back in
the most charming way possible. As I entered the lobby it appeared
strangely empty. In the distance I saw Mr. Bard,276 the manager of
this elegant hotel, leaning on the desk. He was not chatting with

273 The Esthetic Style iron balustrade of the Chelsea Hotel is mentioned by Schuyler
in several poems, including “Beaded Balustrade,” “The morning,” “Three Gardens
and “A few days.”
274 August 23 was a Friday. The dating of many entries from August 23 to September
27 is problematic, with missing or wrong information and inner inconsistencies.
Such dates have been left as Schuyler wrote them, marked with [sic].
275 In 1985 Schuyler’s poem “A few days” won the Bernard F. Conners Prize, an
award given annually by The Paris Review for a long poem. The prize is $1000 and
publication of the poem in The Paris Review.
276 Stanley Bard (b. 1934), Managing Director of the Chelsea Hotel. His father,
David Bard, bought the hotel with two partners in 1939. Stanley Bard has worked in
the hotel since 1957.

175

Jerry,277 who was also looking toward me and smiling his smile:
what Ronald Firbank called the smile extending.278 I waved: Mr.
Bard waved back. Various happy welcome backs were exchanged:
all of which I have forgotten—how could I? Wasn’t Tom with me,
carrying everything except the two Banana Smoothies which I was
not about to let anybody else get near, except Helena who kindly
left me the greater part of the second which was a damn good thing
since that was all [the] dinner I was likely to have: there are four
month-old eggs which I fully intend to soft boil and devour the sec¬
ond this interminable ramble comes to an end: right now when I
say that Mr. Bard stepped forward and with a smile held the door
of the elevator. (To say it was un-necessary merely means you the
reader have been in our elevator.)279 1 so hungry: farewell!

Wednesday, September 1985 [sic]
Yestereve the sunset shone briefly—a long while it seemed—caus¬
ing an effect on loft-style stately building across the way: a glow
that reminded me of what happens in Venice when buckets of rain,
including hail, fall upon Istrian stone: an inner pinkness that goes
on and on and on until.. .280
The Mystery plant (gift of George Schneeman in entertaining
Schneeman flower pot) is doing nicely as is the sprig of ivy. The

277 Jerry Weinstein, front desk manager of the Chelsea Hotel.
278 ‘“Just hark to the crowds!’ the Prince evasively said. And never too weary to
receive an ovation, he skipped across the room towards the nearest window, where
he began blowing kisses to the throng.
“ ‘Give them the Smile Extending, darling,’ his mother beseeched.” (The Flower
Beneath the Foot). Schuyler also borrowed this phrase in “Beautiful Funerals,” where,
“John/ Latouche hands out/ his smile extending.”
The elevator doors in the Chelsea Hotel take a very long time to close.
280

jstrjan stone with the silver-pink cast to it of Georg Arends that/ After a

rainstorm enflames itself: no: that’s the bricks (Istrian/ Stone and bricks contrasted)
that become petals of roses, blossoming/ Stone...” (“The Morning of the Poem”).

176

nearly dead from neglect and non-watering (“I have watered the
plants”: like hell you did) parlor linden that Darragh grew from a
cutting is recovering nicely. It shed so many leaves that its skeleton
shows plainly and attractively “the alphabet of the trees.” It stands
on one of the speakers and needs turning. Why not now? Yes,
now, while Ida Cox281 is singing: “Don’t let your whisky drive
away your only friend.”

Sunday, September 15, 1985
Yesterday, the golden morning I will never forget: after the cab I
sat on the steps and waited. There was ivy all around: groundcover. In New York City we are grateful for a little groundcover.
Down the street you come, not strolling: I admire folks who arrive
on time without a lot of clock watching. (Naturally I have lost or
misplaced my just repaired glasses)... where was I? The big news is
the weight 195 and it’s going down. No bloodwork, no, “just a
little prick:” whose prick are we talking about, anyway? Mine or
yours or all pricks in general? Then something better than a hug:
perhaps a slight wetness in the eye. Exit at a moderate pace and
pause to pick one stem of ivy: does ivy have stems? It rests in the
Vermont gray pitcher looking well and happy and slowly to form
roots: I will plant it and the house will know why I picked ivy and
back to the wonderful world of pricey taxis. I would so much
rather stroll home, digging the architecture: always something to
look at, eh Jim. Yes. Ivy.
What a golden day, despite several non-surprises. I especially
enjoyed the visit from the house plumber just when I didn’t need him.
At least the kitchen sink is going to be fixed; how nice. Now a quick
refreshing stand under almost cold water. After all there is a drought.
Those shattering lines, perhaps the most shattering in English:

281 Ida (Prather) Cox (1896-1967), blues singer. Her first recording was “Any
Woman’s Blues” in 1923.

177

Cover her face:
She died young...
(one should accent the second syllable in the interest of prolonging
the torture of the scene) are spoken by the Cardinal as he contem¬
plates the Duchess, murdered because she craved “green apricks”
and everybody knows what that means. The Cardinal should be
seen in profile, making a Bresson-like283 gesture so that enough
time passes for the audience to feel enough time goes by for a little
reading of Proust’s The Captive: in which Marcel contemplates the
beloved and sorts out his thoughts, slowly. (Marcel is and is not a
self portrait). The center of a work so complex, so full of pride and
mystery that the next party comes rather like a seventh inning
stretch. As for the Duchess of Malfi, I would rather not think about
“enter chorus of madmen, acting silly.”284
The Cardinal’s gesture—he moves slowly, in great robes—is
pointing down at the dead Duchess’s face, and says with dignity
and slowly pronounces the lines that are an epitaph that is the
promise of a well-kept curse:
r\ r\r\

Cover her face:
Mine eyes dazzle:
She died young...

282 These lines, from John Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi,” are spoken by the
Cardinal’s brother, Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria. In the tragedy, the Cardinal and
Ferdinand scheme to inherit the property of their widowed sister, the Duchess of
Malfi, who has secretly married her steward. The Duchess’s servant, actually in the
employ of her brothers, offers her fresh “apricocks” (apricots), a craving for which
was apparently thought to be a sign of pregnancy.

283 Robert Bresson (b. 1907), French filmmaker. From a letter to Joe Brainard, June
4, 1971: “I loved... Bresson’s ‘Une Femme Douce’ (‘A Gentle Soul’—) A favorite
shot: feet in shoes on oriental rug; feet go away; you go on looking at rug—like one
here, right now, in living room—a long time, in color.”

284 The stage direction in the Penguin Library edition is simply, “Enter Madmen.”
The Duchess of Malfi’s brother, Ferdinand, sends a group of madmen to live with
her, “To bring her to despair.” They dance, “with music answerable therunto.”

178

Auden collaborated with Brecht285 on a Broadway version of
“The Duchess of Malfi” starring Elizabeth Bergner286 and Canada
Lee287 in white-face. As a breakthrough I prefer Cosy Cole on
drums in “Carmen Jones.” What a charming show, and Pene Du
Bois289 costumes!
More madmen, more prancing around.

Monday, September 16, 1985
A morning spent dozing, now soon off to Hy’s with Bill de

Noyelles. Helena is in Maine, for a brief visit to Rudy and Yvonne
Burckhardt.290 She will be back Thursday, about 3 pm, having

285 Bertolt Brecht (1989-1956), German dramatist and director. Auden’s work on
this production is mentioned in Schuyler’s poem, “Wystan Auden.” Auden and
Brecht, though respectful of each other’s work in general, did not get on as collabo¬
rators. Moreover, the text which was finally used on Broadway in 1946, “was so dif¬
ferent from the text Brecht had worked on that he withdrew his name... Despite
incidental music by Benjamin Britten, the production proved a complete failure.”
(W.H. Auden: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter).

286 Elisabeth Bergner (1898-1986), Austrian actress. Bergner made her reputation in
productions directed by Max Reinhardt. She emigrated to England in 1933 and reg¬
ularly appeared on Broadway and in films until the late 1940s. It was she who origi¬
nally asked Brecht to revive “The Duchess of Malfi” as a vehicle for her.

287 Canada Lee (bom Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata; 1907-1952), actor. A for¬
mer bandleader, pugilist and jockey, he gained overnight fame as an actor when he
played the role of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s “Native Son” in 1941. He
also played the lead in the film “Cry the Beloved Country” in 1952.

288 Cosy Cole (1906 or 1909-1981), jazz drummer. He played with Cab Calloway’s
Orchestra from to 1938 to 1942 and with Louis Armstrong from 1949 to 1953. In the
1960s he had his own band.

289 “Carmen Jones,” Oscar Hammerstein Jr.’s adaptation of Bizet’s “Carmen,” set in
a contemporary munitions plant with an all-black cast, was the hit of the Broadway
season of 1943. Raoul Pene du Bois (1914-1985), the set and costume designer for
“Carmen Jones,” designed each act in a different primary color.

290 Yvonne Jacquette.
179

visited the bank and bearing a sum of money for me; and I suppose
herself.
Of course it is silly (anent previous entry) to pronounce “died”
as though of two syllables—the lines are dramatic enough without
undue emphasis.
Sure wish I could learn how to spell rythm. What a stunner.

[undated]

I wonder what day it is.
Yesterday all hell broke loose. Forget it.291
Helena came back from Maine, air sick from a bumpy ride. She
told me many Maine-Burckhardt stories. She was taken to see
Edwin’s grave in the woods where his ashes lie: an unmarked stone
of no great size. Period. That elegance, that genius, that strange
lover: and, aged eighty—why spell it out? He wrote his own epi¬
taph when he looked at a photograph of the beautiful and great
Nijinsky292 standing, one arm encircling his head, eyes closed: to
Edwin it was,
“Mysterious as breathing in sleep.. .”293
Dear heart, rest well.

291 Edwin Denby, depressed over his failing health, committed suicide at Rudy
Burckhardt’s summer home in Maine in 1983. According to Helena Hughes,
Schuyler became emotionally upset when she returned from her visit there and told
him about it.
292 Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950), ballet dancer and choreographer. A member of
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the early part of this century, his career was cut short
by a complete mental breakdown.
293 Schuyler had used this line in “The Faure Ballade.” It is from Denby’s essay,
“Notes on Nijinsky Photographs,” first printed in Dance Index, March, 1943 and col¬
lected in Looking at the Dance, Horizon Press, 1968: “I am also very moved by the
uplifted, half-unclenched hands in the Jeux picture, as mysterious as breathing in
sleep.”

180

Tuesday, September 17, [1985\
All I know is it’s Tuesday, the month is very likely September,
and I can find out the date later. It’s too damn early, the sky
is beginning to go gray, the pomograph is playing that Duke
Ellington again, the one with Louis Armstrong: maybe some day I
will tire of “Mood Indigo”294 and today could be the day. How
about Jams395 singing “sit there and count your fingers” (all right:
yes, I have three: how many you got mister? Hey I wanta buy
some: gimme five bucks). Forget it. I have plenty of Duke waxings
in reserve, followed by the works of Faure, except the infinitely
tedious Requiem.296 Perhaps a nice Bach sonata for unaccompa¬
nied cello as rendered by Pierre Fournier on his occarina? No no
not today. “Let Me Off in Harlem” is definitely it; right now.297
I suppose Darragh is still asleep in his luxurious mansion. Big
lazy-bones: he's asking for it: and will get it, if I have my way. No
no no: not that way, this way. LJhrnmm.
The life of a vegetarian is so simple it approached stark¬
ness until I learnt of the Cheese Store, where they indeed sell
294 “Mood Indigo/’ recorded by the Duke Ellington band (under the pseudonym of
the Harlem Foot Warmers) in 1930, was the first Duke Ellington instrumental to
become a popular hit song. Ellington wrote the main theme; his clarinetist, Barney
Bigard, collaborated on the melody for the verse. In his poem, “Mood Indigo,”
Schuyler calls the music, “the first songlfellin/ love to...” and mentions its “unfor¬
gettable dragging rhythm.”
295 Janis Joplin (1943-1970) American blues and rock singer (also known as Pearl).
The time when Schuyler listened to her recordings most intently was in the early
1970s when he was in love with Bob J-. The first of his Bob J-. love poems
in the “Loving You” section of The Crystal Lithium is “Janis Joplin’s Dead:/ Long
Live Pearl.”
296 Schuyler’s feeling for the chamber music of Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) is evoked
in several poems, including “Faure’s Second Piano Quartet.
297 Pierre Fournier (1906-1986), French cellist. “I love all music/ except Bach—I do
like the sonatas/ for unaccompanied cello: how/ many are there? Six,/ I m pretty
sure. Divine Pierre Fournier!” (“O Sleepless Night”)
“Drop Me Off in Harlem” was written by Duke Ellington with Nick and Charles
Kenny and first recorded by the Ellington band in 1933.

181

Gourmandise (I prefer cherry or plum but bought a wedge of wal¬
nut on strict understanding I would gobble up said fattening delight
in jig time so I could return today and for an unlikely two bucks
I...why did I open a parenthesis which I flatly refuse to close?
Refusing flatly consists of disrobing, reclining and...
Good grief: “Mood Indigo.” Must snatch off and play Duke
Ellington hits! Or perhaps Blossom Dearie298 right after I shampoo
with non-existent shampoo, dump with all too existent dump
material, etc.
Here I beat hasty retreat to john. Heavens to Betsy more
“Mood Indigo.” This must end and soon but not just yet “In. My.
Mood. Indigo.”

Tuesday, September 18, 1985 [sic]
I said to Helena yesterday as we left Hy’s sometime after noon,
“This is a perfect day!” So it was: warm verging on hot, clear and
scintillating and the cabs empty and welcoming, just when and
where you need them. All the personal abrasions sorted out. Perfec¬
tion of late September entering that finest of months, October.
It didn’t hurt at all that a 10 a.m. call disclosed (eventually) that
I am to receive, Oct. 31st at the Morgan Library, $25,000.299 No
quarrely with that. Helena will go with me and Jonathan Galassi
will be there. What seemed yesterday like icing on the cake, today
appears like a temporary solving of all my endless money prob¬
lems: debts to doctors, wages to pay, etc. October is just the month
I would like to return to Venice. But November might have suf¬
ficed (if not Venice then perhaps my eternally abiding Rome): but
health prevents that problem from even arising...
Now I have to face up to saying something nice about Edwin

298 Blossom Dearie (b. 1926), popular cabaret singer and pianist.
299 Schuyler was one of 10 recipients of the first Whiting Writers’ Awards. The
award was presented at a ceremony at the Morgan Library on October 31, 1985.
Schuyler was accompanied by Eileen Myles.

182

Denby’s Collected, now to be re-issued in a stately form by
Random House (farewell, Full Court Press)300 (...Oh well, Edwin,
you indeed were, in a sense “A beast with a human face” but you
were also a true poet, what you most wanted to be)...
As for today, it’s early, the sun is coming out now and then, it
will be warm but not too hot... and who were the first I shared my
good news with? Of course Helena, Hy Weitzen, Tom, Daniel
Newman, Jimmy McCourt and Vincent [Virga]. One knows one’s
friends.

Thursday, September 19, 1985
A sunny day and Peggy Lee is singing and I wonder how dramatic
today will be and quite possibly no drama at all. Not great sleep but
some, always better than none.
Finances bug me: need clock from around comer ($15.00),
need glasses with new frames ($45.00) anticipate Monday and
Tuesday, cabs to Hy Weitzen and Dr. Newman (more or less $20).
I suppose I can always give up food and live on air like an orchid.
Oh. Wefi.
I like my new style poems very much—uncertain success of
this morning’s effort, a salute to Brook Benton.302 But I usually feel
like that right after giving birth....
300 Edwin Denby’s Collected Poems was published by Full Court Press in 1975. It was
the first book published by the press, whose editors were Anne Waldman, Joan
Simon and Ron Padgett. The Complete Poems, edited and with an introduction by
Ron Padgett, was published by Random House in 1986. James Schuyler contributed
a blurb for the jacket, in which he wrote, “There is here a startling simplicity con¬
cealing a complexity of thought, a harsh rigour, of, say, a Hopkins, delighting the
common reader, a reader readyto address himself to truly great verse.
301 When Schuyler returned from Italy in September, 1949, he first stayed in Chester
Kallman’s apartment on East 27th Street. “There was a very delightful elderly
Jewish lady who lived under Chester who, when he played his records too loud,
would come up and say, ‘You’re a beast with a human face! You’re a beastV”
(Interview with Peter Schjeldahl, 1977).
302 This poem is unidentified, or may have been destroyed. Brook Benton: see the
entry for August 5, 1985, and Note.

183

“You’re interested in your foot: I’m interested in your diabetes.”

September 25, 1985
In other words air like that of my favorite month, October, comes
in the window and the day has not yet begun, in the dawn sense
and WNCN is as usual featuring something ignoble on my least
favorite instrument the classical guitar. A pause for a forbidden
possibly lethal cigarette. Uhm. Good. Sure wish I could blow
smoke rings. (Collapses and dies at typewriter right leg having
turned blue as resident gaily predicted at Beekman Hospital of the
entrancing views.)
Hooray the Wall Street Journal Report soon to be followed by
the news. Let’s give a listen. Yes, death toll Mexico reaches 3,500
more to come; meanwhile ruins being carefully demolished hope
of possibly spare lives survivors; recall last night’s TV news in
which fatuously grinning first lady presents—not gives, presents—
check for one million gift of entire nation: how about cancelling
Star Wars and nerve gas and giving whatever is needed no matter
what the cost? Hurricane Gloria packing winds of 150 mph heads
for East Coast. Goody. I like hurricanes: may I shelter at your pad,
Doc. Cookie Bandit Strikes. Gives kiss exchange roll of dimes.
Yesterday picked another stem of ivy after mad battle with
same in the rain after leaving Daniel’s. Latter, to my utmost joy,
accepts my dedication of Selected Poems304 to him! Later speaks of
“honor”: he feels honored! How about his daily visits to this one
during endless convalesce [nee], his “toucher” ways, the ringlets,
etc. More about that later.
Meantime, back in the office, looks up anti-pain pill. Discover
has enough potential damage of strychnine. Book suggests weekly

303 At 7:19 a.m. on September 19, 1985, a devastating earthquake struck Mexico
City. Measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale, it killed as many as 10,000 people and flat¬
tened 400 buildings.
304 Selected Poems, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1988, bears the dedica¬
tion, “For Daniel Newman.”

184

blood work: Good God, can I afford to see him weekly? Wild
surmises quelled by agreement to meet every three weeks for two
years beginning some Saturday soon. Well Dr. Delight here I
come! “Here’s Clay-elle D’Alferes...”305 How spell? Am divinely
happy. I confront death with indifference.

Thursday, September 27, 1985 [sic]
Good Heavens! The piece I couldn’t name that just ended of
course turns out to be the Diabelli Variations—as John said,
“With a theme like that, how could Beethoven fail?” Indeed: a
nothing little waltz-like tune by the overweening Diabelli, a work I
particularly love, and, as usual, since there are no words to
it I can’t name it. This happens with anything: of course I can
name, less than instantly, the Bizet symphony, not because
Balanchine created a great ballet to its tunes (he made it for the
Paris Opera where I first saw it with Bill [Aalto] in ’47: called then
“Palais de Cristal” with measly little crystal clusters by Leonore
Fini:306 I haven’t forgotten everything) no I recognize it because
WNCN has drummed it into my head maddeningly, along with
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Ravel’s “Bolero,” a little item called
“The Entrance of the Queen of Sheba,” Schubert’s Unfinished, and
so on. No wonder I prefer playing my LPs. Where was I? Forget it.
It’s still very dark: go to sleep too early, wake up too early. I
don’t mind, so long as the dawn in all its beauty is soon to arrive.
More Beethoven. Well, if you really feel like more Brook
Benton, why not put him on? Oh I don’t know...
Another interesting talk yesterday with Jonathan Leake:" it
spooks me that I knew his father Paul, that his father and I once
kissed rather passionately at Wystan Auden’s: nothing came of it
305 Clayelle Dalferes, a radio announcer on WNCN in the late 1980s.
306 Leonore Fini (1908-1996), Surrealist artist and theatrical designer. “Le Palais de
Cristal,” choreographed by Balanchine for the Paris Opera Ballet, premiered at the
Opera de Paris on July 28, 1947.
307 Jonathan Leake worked for a time as Schuyler’s assistant.

185

beyond an invitation to lunch with Paul at the UN which I
declined. And now I’m sorry I never knew better a fascinating man
who spoke eight languages, when in his cups recited Homer in
Greek, etc. That he was elegantly dressed is all I remember: that,
and a little more...

Hurricane Gloria Day—-Maybe
September [27\ 1985
An alarmist Charlie Martin aroused an alarmed Helena so they
both appeared here circa 3 AM and entered—without having
phoned or even knocked—she bearing necessary medicines and
two quarts of milk, period. Hurricane Gloria at the moment is
stalling around North Carolina and proceeding possibly hereward
at an exciting 25 MPH. However, the World Trade Center will be
closed today (it is now about 4:30 a.m.) in fear that the whole
damn thing may sway. It sways all the way to total collapse I won’t
mind—provided nobody gets hurt, of course. That I feel rather
tired, even more so than usual, is easily understood, by me at least.
A contributing factor was the arrival yesterday of the proof of
Darragh’s jacket painting308 (and if the proof of the jacket is just
arriving now, when “in the fall” is the book coming out? I wonder)
which is lovely: a Hamptons scene of greenery and water and plen¬
ty of purple loosestrife: Darragh sure can pick up fast on the right
image in my poetry. The joy of success was offset by the title etc.
being too large and set in loathsome italic. Speaking to Darragh
(on the long distance phone: what else?) discovered he is quite
angry because he had been promised that the title etc. would not be
set in italic, but straight up and down and smaller. I feel strongly
enough to have changed my mind about the jacket of my Selected
Poems: and have asked Darragh to design the whole thing, both of
us having as much control as possible over every aspect including

308 For A Few Days, 1985.

186

type face, this being spelled out in our contract... need I say more?
No the man with the iron whim has spoken.
Well, it’s after 7 in the momin’ and I am no longer cross.
According to Clayelle Dalferes (on WNCN) there will be torrential
downpours shortly, everybody is advised to keep off the streets, etc.
Thus probably putting quietus to Tom’s plan to see me this morn¬
ing—life is cruel and lovely and I’m about to write to Daniel.

Saturday, September 28, 1985
The day after the non-advent—here, in Manhattan, at least—of
Hurricane Gloria. I recall the days of Edna,309 hence Bill Aalto’s
camp name, Big Edna. Endless warnings and dire promises on the
radio. My favorite was: A flower pot can become a lethal weapon
in a hurricane. The same is true if said pot is effectively thrown.3101
went out to the deli and found the “torrential downpour” was
more like rain and wind.
Tried to call Darragh several times, both in Bridgehampton
and in town, but he, answering machine and no doubt Oriane had
taken refuge I know not where. A good idea, since the eye of the
hurricane came ashore near where he lives in Suffolk County.
I am as cross as two sticks, and uncertain why. Desire no doubt
to have love object respond to my unspoken desire in a way that is
never going to happen. Damn. More fruitless yearning.
Help! Just looked at the pre-author’s proof from The New Yorker

309 Despite predictions that it would hit the city full force, Hurricane Gloria brought
only a heavy rainstorm to Manhattan. Hurricane Edna struck New York and New
England in September, 1954, five years after Schuyler and Aalto had broken up and
long after Aalto’s camp nickname had been bestowed. Aalto’s violence was extreme
and unpredictable. He once chased Schuyler around the kitchen table on Ischia with
a carving knife.
310 Schuyler could be referring both to Bill Aalto’s volatile temper and to an incident
of domestic violence from his childhood, which Schuyler mentions in an unpub¬
lished poem, “East Aurora”: “Pointed the hose through the kitchen window at her,
so she threw the pot of geraniums at him.”

187

of “Horse Chestnut Trees” and find the “odious vandal” line was
left in on the copy I sent Howard Moss.311 Must write him not now
but now. Hope he sees things my way... otherwise...

Monday, September 30, 1985
And very early in the night of the day it is: a phone call quite a
while after I took my not all that effectual sleeping pill woke me
up, but good. I didn’t want the phone call, I made an arrangement
I also particularly didn’t want to make. Perhaps I do not confront
life with the manliness, the virility I like to think I do: nowadays, at
any rate.
One thing is clear: I confront the fact of my own inevitable
death with indifference. Either what I believe is true—the whole
New Testament, and I have only read that in parts, particularly the
gospel according to St. John—but that doesn’t matter. How much I
have learned from knowing the prayers of the rosary, more or less
memorizing the text of the Requiem, so beautiful, and right now I
cannot remember the name of the great Italian poet who probably
wrote it: attending mass with a missal and most of all going one
morning with Anne to Our Lady of Poland.313 Such simplicity
moves me more deeply than I can or need say. God bless you,
Anne Elizabeth Channing Porter for all you have done for every
one you love and for so many perhaps strangers!

311 Howard Moss was the poetry editor at The New Yorker.
312 See the entry for July 23, 1985. The poem as published in The New Yorker on June
8, 1987, did include the original last line, “odious hateful vandal/’ As finally pub¬
lished in Schuyler’s Collected Poems the line is omitted.
313 Our Lady of Poland is a small Roman Catholic church near the railroad station in
Southampton. “The windows of Our Lady of Poland,/ rich and big in a small
church/ glowing in dead elm leaf and ocean smell evenings,” Schuyler wrote in an
unpublished poem, “November.”

188

,

Thursday October 3, 1985
To say that I am distressed by the death of that excellent actor,
Rock Hudson!314 Dying prematurely of that horrendous ailment,
AIDS, and with dignity and surrounded by his staff, his immediate
family they were. I heard it on Live at Five on Channel 4, the
whole hideous '‘and direct from in front of Rock Hudson’s home
in...” “Get that camera out of here you son of a bitch! What kind
of people are you?” Not human, that’s for sure. So I turned it off
(enough is as good as a feast) and wept by myself. Unconsoied?
When so fine a man dies the question of personal consolation does
not arise.
Now I like to think of him staying in his friend Elizabeth
Taylor’s apartment when he was last here in New York. I like to
remember him in “Lili” with Julie Andrews, running around in a
non-seduction scene in long undershorts, vintage World War I.
And yet, what is there about comedies grounded in hideous wars
that sometimes turns me off?
Now I must (or must not) address myself to the problem that
Random House is no way about to reissue two of my books with
beautiful covers by Fairfield.315 We will see. All I know is that
when Fairfield picked me up at the hospital in New Haven on the
first day of summer in 1961 he said, “I’ll never let you down,
Jimmy.” He never did and I am not about to let him down, no, it
matters not that my dearest friend has been dead for ten years: a
debt is a debt and must be paid.

314 Rock Hudson (bom Roy Scherer, Jr.; 1925-1985) made worldwide headlines in
July, 1985 when he acknowledged that he had AIDS and revealed his homosexuality.
315 The Crystal Lithium (1972) and Hymn to Life (1974) were both published with cov¬
ers by Fairfield Porter. The original watercolor for Hymn to Life hung on Schuyler’s
wall in the Chelsea Hotel.

189

Friday, October 4, 1985
Perhaps I’ll have something vaguely worth writing here—right
now something ineffable of Berlioz—can it be the good old march
to the scaffold?316 Indeed it is: tramp tramp—is on the swoon tube.
Soon to make way for Ida Cox. What I like about early morning
listening is the distance of the news and the rain-soaked weather
report. More later, should occasion warrant.

Sunday, October 6, 1985
I completely blew my stack a little while ago and caused Tom and
Helena to scoot out of “my home.” Am I sorry? I would hate more
than anything in life to lose the love of Tom, the person I love
more than anyone in my entire life: so good, so beautiful, so talent¬
ed in so many ways! To say I regret my temper outburst which may
very well cost me his friendship... well, terrible things happen in
life. That is no news to me.
A charming dinner with J. J. Mitchell and Darragh last night at
Onini’s. J.J. and Tom see a cousinly look-alikeness between J.J.
and Darragh that eludes these eyes.
But I’m too distressed to go on.

Monday, October 7, 1985
A good night’s sleep to my considerable surprise after yesterday’s
temper outburst. Perhaps I don’t regret it after all, particularly after
recounting it all, with details as to why I feel as I do, to Darragh,

316 Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique” op. 14, is subtitled “Episode de la vie
d’un artiste”; its fourth movement, “March au supplice,” represents the artist’s
opium dream that he is being led to execution for the murder of his beloved.

190

who simply commented when I finished that he was glad I said
what I did. Well, yes, except I would go to the ends of the earth not
to offend, even distress, Tom, my Tom, whom I do indeed “love
the most of anyone in the world.” That doesn’t mean I’m about to
put up with having his attention distracted, on his regular afterChurch Sunday visits, by lower East Side chat. No way. Come
here, Tom, I want one of your wall-corroding kisses. In fact, I
don’t want anything physical from Tom: just his beautiful presence
and full attention while I read him this poem, “Our Father.”317
49 degrees out! And it’s early October! I’m going out in it and
up to Hy’s!
Reading my own books318 (which I never do, not wanting
whatever I’m writing now to be contaminated by ancient thoughts)
I’m surprised by the—well, say it—high level, the sheer quality.
There’s no reason to be: a lot of thought and affection went not
only into writing the damn poems, but also their, uh, display.
Which is much less splendid in the more easily selected from Hymn
to Life. It seems my idea there was print it and all be damned.
“The government is broke!” Oh good: at least it isn’t
Greensleeves.

Tuesday, October 8, 1945 [,sic]
I’m tired of writing this in the early still dark, but here I go again,
though firmly resolved to return later and add a word in favor of
the dawn. Somebody is doing something unspeakable to a cello or
perhaps celli on WNCN. The only reason I listen at all is that
momently one will get the news, the commuter report (which I

317 “Our Father” was written in 1971 in the Vermont State Hospital. In writing it,
Schuyler might have been influenced by William Blake’s “The Lord’s Prayer” which
was included in Auden’s commonplace book, A Certain World (1970). John Ashbery
read “Our Father” at Schuyler’s funeral.
318 Schuyler was working with Jonathan Galassi choosing poems to be included in
Selected Poems (1988).

191

enjoy mostly because its numerous traffic jams in no way involve
me) and, oh joy, the weather. I already am aware that today is
going to be grand, like yesterday.
Yesterday Hy agreed with Darragh in finding my Sunday tem¬
per explosion as (if WNCN actually plays “Nessun dorma” again I
am going to smash the little white radio. In person.) healthy and
called for. Good. Me too. Tom says he was in no way angry,
simply determined to leave and not wait around stalling on one
foot while Helena recovered her keys: still, he insisted on taking a
cab home, and taking a cab always means something...

October 10, 1985
Ida Cox: I wonder why I put up with Tom marching in and saying,
“I hate that record.” So what? I play records for my own diversion.
Furthermore didn’t I put up with what seemed like non-playing of
an electric guitar on otherwise pleasant occasions when Tom sang
and switched his butt around? Enjoyable yes; and so is divine Ida.
“The blues aint nothin’” the hell they aint.
I never thought I’d anxiously await the passing of October, my
favorite month of months, but I do want the bread I’m to receive
on the 31st. I foresee a lightning ascent to Sam Goody and a light¬
ning descent on Tower Records and the acquisition of more Peggy
Lee, more Brook Benton, more Soul, more Duke Ellington, more
rock-bottom jazz. If only Whitney Balliett would advise me!
What beautiful blue days we’re having. A stroll in the street is
indeed something else.

Friday, October 11, 1985
A brisk walk to the comer mail box: a gray-blue morning in the
month that, today, I hope will go slowly on and on. Then I was

192

musing on the bed when a beam of sunlight cause[d] a line of brick
to light up with a mellow red effect.
Perhaps I will see Tom today, perhaps I won’t.
Eileen [Myles] came by yesterday, which was delightful. She’s
so interesting and I like her so much. She still has vestiges of her
Yucatan tan. The Y’ucatan in mid-summer? For Ei I guess, not me.

Sunday, October 13, 1985
Across the street a window goes rather blue: earliest glimmer of
dawn, at seven in the morning, so much later, it seems, than it
recently was. I can’t wait for daylight savings to end!

Sunday, November 10, 1985
Mildred Bailey is singing “Gee but it’s hard to love someone when
that someone don’t love you,” which I do not find to be true at all.
Yesterday was my 62nd birthday, and when I told Daniel he
gave me a big kiss. On the cheek, but none the less a big one.
I celebrated the night before, holding a small dinner party at
Lombardi’s on Spring Street: Tom, Helena, Jimmy McCourt and
Vincent Virga and Darragh. As I told Daniel, five gays and Helena,
who didn’t mind at all. $190 for six, not bad at all nowadays, but
Hy will only express shock when I tell him tomorrow morning.
What I enjoyed most was playing kneesie with Tom, who either
thought I was part of the table or put up with it because it was my
birthday party. Either way, I liked it!

193

[There is a gap of a year and a half here in Schuyler's Diary. Perhaps he
stopped writing simply because this was approximately one year after he
began keeping the Diary in collaboration with Darragh Park: a project
that was intended to cover one year.
By the time Schuyler began the Diary again in 1987, he had started
attending various Episcopal churches, eventually settling on the Church of
the Incarnation on Madison Avenue at 35th Street. In 1986, after about six
years, Helena Hughes stopped working as Schuyler's assistant. ]

June