Top 12 Quotes by James Schuyler

I wish i could press snowflakes in a book like flowers.

I wish i could press snowflakes in a book like flowers.

Flower, Book, Wish

Looking at the sky last night and the moon in the first fresh dark, just a few stars, bright with their cold flares, I had a little crumpled thought, 'Oh well, the moon. It's just another place like California.' One's imagination drags its feet as we are inexorably hauled into the future.

James Schuyler

Stars, Dark, Moon

James Schuyler, Nathan Kernan (1997). “The diary of James Schuyler”, Black Sparrow Pr

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate

James Schuyler

Artist, Talking, Firsts

Snow falling softly on lashes of eyes you love, and a cold cheek growing warm next to your own in hushed dark familial December.

James Schuyler

Fall, Eye, Dark

James Schuyler (1969). “Freely Espousing: Poems”

In the past I have declined to comment on my own work: because, it seems to me, a poem is what it is; because a poem is itself a definition, and to try to redefine it is to be apt to falsify it; and because the author is the person least able to consider his work objectively

James Schuyler

Past, Trying, Able

James Schuyler (2004). “Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler, 1951-1991”

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

James Schuyler

Poetry, Poetic, Prose

James Schuyler (2004). “Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler, 1951-1991”

It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience)

James Schuyler

Mean, Thinking, Mysterious

James Schuyler (2004). “Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler, 1951-1991”