James Schuyler Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself. — James Schuyler

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

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

To change your phrase somewhat, I know that I like an art where disparate elements form an entity. — James Schuyler

One tends to write beyond what's needed. — James Schuyler

A nothing day full of wild beauty ... Little fish stream by, a river in water. — James Schuyler

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

However, intention needn't enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don't see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others. — James Schuyler

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

What are the questions you wish to ask? — James Schuyler

It is always pleasant to learn that someone takes an interest in a work which one enjoyed writing. — James Schuyler

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

I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem. — James Schuyler