James Schuyler

The New York School of Beauty

The man who cut James Schuyler’s hair also cuts my hair.

I once heard Schuyler read at the Ninety Second Street Y.

A large man, he sat at a wooden table positioned center stage

and took highly dramatic gulps of water between the reading

of his dead-pan poems.

                                           Carrying my postpartum weight,

I trudge behind my child’s stroller up Hudson Street past

Saint Luke’s and then over to the White Horse Tavern.

I find myself thinking of him, identifying sequentially with

the poet’s size, his last-ditch Episcopalianism, his thirst.

from Cultural Tourism by Mary Maxwell (LongNookBooks, 2012). James Schuyler is pictured above.

From the archive; first posted December 4, 2020.

Cultural Tourism by Mary Maxwell

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Author: The Best American Poetry

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