James Schuyler Papers, 1947-1991 (MSS 78)

Born on November 9, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois, James Marcus Schuyler experienced a peripatetic childhood. His family lived for a time in Downer's Grove, a suburb of Chicago, then Washington, D.C., and later Chevy Chase, Maryland. His parents divorced early in Schuyler's childhood and he remained with his mother and step-father. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Buffalo, New York, and two years later to East Aurora, a suburb outside of Buffalo.

Schuyler attended Bethany College in West Virginia from 1941 to 1943. There he pursued interests in history, architecture, and literature. During World War II, in 1943, he joined the U.S. Navy. He spent the next two years on a destroyer in the North Atlantic, protecting convoys. He remained in the Navy after the war.

In 1947, Schuyler moved to the Isle of Ischia in Italy for two years. There he lived in the rented house of W.H. Auden, whom he had met in New York. Schuyler served as Auden's secretary, typing the manuscript for Auden's book Gnomes and Auden's translation of Jean Cocteau's "Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde." Schuyler also attended the University of Florence at this time, and he began writing poetry. Although he returned to New York briefly, an inheritance allowed him the financial independence to return to Florence in mid-1950.

Schuyler began writing seriously in the late 1940's, but an important breakthrough in his career came in 1951. As a result of his correspondence with Howard Moss, Moss published Schuyler's poem "Salute", written in the hospital in White Plains, New York. Moss later published three of Schuyler's short stories in the magazine Accent along with a poem entitled "Three Penny Opera" by Frank O'Hara. At a party, Moss introduced Schuyler to Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, who had been Moss's schoolmates at Harvard.

Schuyler soon became involved with the so-called New York School of writers and artists. By 1951, he and Frank O'Hara shared an apartment on 49th Street, where they were later joined by John Ashbery after Ashbery's return from France. Schuyler worked for a while at a bookshop on 54th street and later, with the financial assistance of a friend, devoted himself to writing what would become his first novel, Alfred and Guinevere. By 1955 he was working for the magazine Art News as an art critic and associate editor. His colleagues at Art News included John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Fairfield Porter, and Elaine De Kooning. For this journal Schuyler reviewed exhibitions and wrote articles. By 1957 he was also working for the Museum of Modern Art in the Department of Circulating Exhibitions.

Schuyler's writing career expanded greatly in the mid-1950s and 1960s. He wrote the libretto for Paul Bowles' recording entitled A Picnic Cantata (1955) and two off-broadway plays, Presenting Jane (1952) and Shopping and Waiting (1953). In 1958 he published his first novel, Alfred and Guinevere, a book about children and their perceptions. Then came two collections of verse, Salute (1960) and May 24th or So (1966).

Between 1961 and 1973, Schuyler lived with the Fairfield Porter family in Southampton, Long Island, and moved among New York poets and painters, including Fairfield Porter, Kenward Elmslie, Ron Padgett, and Joe Brainard. He collaborated with Kenward Elmslie on the off-broadway play Unpacking the Black Trunk (1965).

Collaborating with John Ashbery, Schuyler published the novel A Nest of Ninnies in 1969. Begun early in their relationship, the novel is a satire on suburbanites and their lifestyles. This work appeared at the same time as Schuyler's first major collection of poetry Freely Espousing (1969).

Schuyler's productivity reached a zenith during the 1970s, with the publication of numerous collections of poems including The Crystal Lithium (1972); A Sun Cab (1972); Penguin Modern Poets 24, with Kenneth Koch and Kenward Elmslie (1973); Hymn to Life (1974); Song (1976); The Fireproof Floors of Witley Count: English Songs and Dances (1976); and The Home Book: Prose and Poems 1951-1970 (1977). Schuyler also produced his third novel entitled What's for Dinner, published in 1978. His last work of the decade was The Morning of the Poem (1980), for which he received a Pulitzer Prize.

Although well-known and successful by the early 1980s, Schuyler turned to a life of reclusion as poor health and financial difficulties hindered his writing. He continued to live in New York City, and published two collections of poetry: A Few Days (1985) and Selected Poems (1988).

In addition to a Pulitzer Prize for The Morning of the Poem, Schuyler received the Longview Foundation award (1961), the Frank O'Hara Prize (1969), two National Academy for the Arts grants (1969, 1972), an American Academy award (1977), and an Academy of American Poets fellowship (1983).

"James Schuyler's is a poetry of perception, the recognition of shapes out of the indiscriminate sensory field," wrote George Butterick in Contemporary Poets (1985). "Reading him," wrote Butterick, "there is a sense of focusing field glasses; always the sharper image results...Schuyler is determined to possess the natural world without a lapse into symbolism. Nature is not to be quarreled with, nor confused with human needs. The world is distinguishable among its parts as well as from the observing narrator. He has tried life and it fits; life matches art..."

Schuyler died on April 12, 1991.