the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt twelve)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

When the doctor again tried to persuade Jimmy to come with them to the hospital, Jimmy turned to his friends and asked, “What do you think I should do?” It was Joe, according to Kenward’s recollection, who “took command” and was finally able to persuade Jimmy to get into the police car. John rode to the hospital with Jimmy, acutely uncomfortable, and struck by the pathos of the situation, which reminded him of the last scene of A Streetcar Named Desire, when Blanche DuBois is finally persuaded by “the kindness of strangers” to go off to a mental institution. During the drive Jimmy turned to him and said, “John, you do believe that I’m the Resurrection and the Life, don’t you?” “Sure,” said John.

For Kenward, the breakdown, “horrible” as it was, was also in a way “an enormous relief” after his tense anticipation of it for the preceding two weeks. Writing shortly afterward to Ron Padgett, Kenward admitted, “This has been an ‘awful’ happening … that kind of intensity is demonic, and one can’t survive with it. Not for long. Or unless one has incredible experience & training, to get one accustomed to it.”

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt eleven)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

By this time, Jimmy was moving slowly toward a manic period. Although he was still in “denial” about the Porters having asked him to leave, and there was no open reference to it in his letters or poems, his anxiety found outlet in increased activity. For the time being this energy was channeled constructively into poetry. Unable to sleep one winter night in Southampton, he picked up a facsimile edition of Whitman’s original Leaves of Grass. He started reading the poem, hoping it would help put him to sleep, but “of course it was the wrong hour to do it because it is an incredibly stimulating work,” he recalled. Obviously, he had read Whitman before this, but confronted anew with “Song of Myself,” it came as a fresh revelation. Within a few days he was inspired to try to write something “like it,” and he began “The Crystal Lithium.”

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt ten)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

C, which Berrigan began as a way to publish his and his friends’ work, was one of the earliest “mimeo” magazines, assembled of mimeographed sheets stapled together, a quick, unfussy form of publishing that would become a hallmark of the growing activity around the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York’s East Village. Most of the magazine’s run of thirteen regular issues (ending in 1966), plus two special issues of C Comics, had cover art or illustrations by Brainard, lending the publication a distinctive visual identity. The magazine’s involvement with the earlier generation of the New York School began with issue number 4, which included a large selection of Edwin Denby’s poems. It was Denby who advocated for publishing Schuyler in C, whetting Berrigan’s interest with a group of unpublished early poems and prose works. After “The Infant Jesus of Prague” appeared in 1963, Berrigan asked permission to publish Schuyler’s story “The Home Book,” as well as some of the poems Edwin had shown him. Jimmy agreed, and they appeared in February 1964, along with Unpacking the Black Trunk, a short play he had written in collaboration with Kenward Elmslie.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt nine)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

“Jimmy came for the weekend and stayed eleven years.” By the early 1970s, when Schuyler had been living with the Porter family for about a decade, this was Anne Porter’s well-worn reply to puzzled acquaintances who, observing the unusual situation, would hesitantly ask, “Is Mr. Schuyler a relative of yours?” Delivered in a voice no louder than a whisper, her answer was nonetheless pointed and, in a manner typical of the woman Jimmy once called “the wittiest person I know,” deflected into wry humor a situation that started casually and warmly, but would gradually turn awkward, then painful, then traumatic over the course of those eleven or twelve years.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt eight)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

Frank O’Hara came out for one memorable weekend, and a group decided to drive out to Coney Island for the day. Jimmy was scared and miserable on the famous roller coaster there, but Frank, typically, was exhilarated by it. Driving back, Frank was still somewhat punch-drunk from the park and sped up as he came into the driveway, pretending he was about to run into Fizdale and several others standing there, but stopped just in time. Fizdale and Gold were frightened and angry at this recklessness, and Jimmy assumed that this would be the last time Frank would be invited out to Snedens Landing. On the contrary. At breakfast the next morning, Fizdale sidled up to Schuyler and said, “I very much like your friend, Frank O’Hara!” Later that day, when Jimmy walked into Fizdale’s bathroom, he was surprised to find Bobby and Frank in the tub, happily taking a bath together. For the rest of the summer, to Jimmy’s great delight, Arthur Weinstein was off the scene and O’Hara and Fizdale enjoyed what would turn out to be a summer romance. There was a witty symmetry to the arrangement, noted with amusement at the time: the two poet-roommates having simultaneous affairs with the two duo-piano partners. The tandem love affairs had the incidental effect of bringing Jimmy and Frank closer together, emphasizing a sort of brotherly feeling that they seemed to have shared, particularly around this time.

Frank was an excellent pianist himself, having studied piano and composition in college. When the pair of professionals were not at their instruments, he often played for long periods. Fizdale was astonished one day to hear from the other room “some Rachmaninoff or Liszt piece being dashed off at the piano” and assumed that Gold was playing, only to come in to find that it was Frank, who he hadn’t even realized could play. This summer was the period of Frank’s life when he came closest to reconnecting with his early musical interests, and it shows in some of the references to musical forms, and to piano music in particular, in poems he wrote at the time. Living with the pianists had an influence on Jimmy’s work as well, giving him not just a greater familiarity with the literature of the piano, seen in later poems such as “Hoboken,” “Scriabin,” “Grand Duo,” and others, but also an insider’s view into the workaday practice of pianists, particularly the intimate collaboration, almost amounting to mindreading, required of duo pianists—insights somewhat applicable to his ongoing collaboration with John Ashbery on A Nest of Ninnies.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt seven)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

On December 1, a night train brought them across France and through the Alps, and they woke to find themselves in Italy. When Bill and Jimmy emerged from Santa Maria Novella station in Florence, they discovered the center of the Renaissance city largely in ruins. Three years previously, on the night of August 3, 1944, hoping to slow the advance of American and British armies, the Germans blew up five of the city’s six bridges, sparing only the Ponte Vecchio. They compensated for that omission by dynamiting all the streets leading up to the bridge on either side of the river. In 1947, most of this damage had yet to be repaired, although temporary Bailey bridges had been erected in place of the Ponte Santa Trinità and the Ponte alla Carraia.

Despite the ruinous state of the city, and the exhaustion of the people after war and hardship, preceded by years of Fascist rule, there was a mood of optimism in the air. “Early post-war Italy was glorious,” wrote the novelist Sybille Bedford. “One embraced the people for whom the springs of life were flowing again; they were at one with the staggering beauty of what there was to see, everywhere, dawdling in the sun, the sweet air, the new near quiet. Petrol was scarce, the Vespas and rattling trams were joyful toys, their noise another attribute of being alive.”

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt six)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

During the nine-or ten-day crossing, Jimmy went on deck and watched the water churning in the ship’s wake, feeling the sense of occasion. His ambition, which he hoped to realize in Italy, was to write fiction—short stories and a novel. He had no thoughts yet of writing poetry. Meanwhile, his change in name held tremendous significance, and not only because “It’s good to / have your own name,” as he later deadpanned in “A few days.” By resuming the name he had been born with, he transformed with a single stroke his unhappy high school years, aimless college years, and the trauma and disgrace of his navy expulsion, into a life lived by another person.

Bill’s self-transformation had begun with his entering Columbia in 1944, graduating in 1947. While in Europe, he was planning to conduct research for two separate books: one on the theory and tactics of guerrilla warfare, the other a general history of Spain and the Mediterranean. Although Auden doubted Bill’s ability to see either of his book projects through, telling him, “You’re never going to write that book,” he helped with practical suggestions and contacts, giving him the name of a Professor Passonatti of Yale, who suggested he work in Florence and gave him a list of possible contacts there. Following this advice, the pair settled on Florence as their destination, but they would stop in Amsterdam and Paris on the way.