, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 in part owing to the advocacy of John Ashbery, one of the judges, earned Schuyler a wider and more appreciative audience. A "poet of warm benediction and praise", Schuyler was "prone to psychotic fits (and) spent much of his adult life in and out of psychiatric institutions". It is not therefore surprising that his poetry is devoted to the "celebration of ordinary pleasures." As Lehman further observes, "Like few other poets, he committed himself to the task of painting what's there and only what's there. In his poems accuracy of observation is raised to a high form of praise. The natural or manmade particulars of the world are celebrated not so much for their utility as for their virtue in merely being." - Lehman, The Last Avant-Garde

, p. 273. As Ashbery put it, "He makes sense, dammit, and he manages to do so without falsifying or simplifying the daunting complexity of life as we are living it today". Berrigan's admiration for Schuyler is well-documented. In a letter dated January 30, 1964, Berrigan, who was editing "C" Magazine

at the time, wrote to Schuyler, whom he had yet to meet: "I'm putting together "C" number 7 now, and hope to get it out in three weeks. I'm tremendously impressed with it so far, and 'The Home Book' is the prize piece among poems by Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch … What a good writer you are! … I'm just dazzled by the graceful quality of your writing! … whenever your name comes up everyone has lots of things of yours in mind that they think are great and should be published immediately! Your work makes up an 'underground movement' all by itself!" Five years later, in a letter to Joe Brainard, Berrigan said, "I always want to read Jimmy." Michael Skolnick remembered his last meeting with Berrigan, and how Berrigan "had just completed on tape a scholarly and no doubt ardent interview with James Schuyler and, unrestrained, he proclaimed this fact joyously." - Anne Waldman, ed., Nice To See You

(Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1991), p. 7-8, p. 43, p. 162. Berrigan died on July 4, 1983. 8vo, original cloth-backed boards, dust jacket. A wonderful association copy, in fine condition.
[Book #18969]       Price: $3,500.00   Book Details