Memoirous

October   Books litter the bed, leaves the lawn. It lightly rains. Fall has come: unpatterned, in the shedding leaves.   The maples ripen. Apples come home crisp in bags. This pear tastes good. It rains lightly on the random leaf patterns.   The nimbus is spread above our island. Rain lightly patters on un- shed leaves. The books of fall litter the bed. I’m still high from reading Nathan Kernan’s A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler. Mental illness permeated his adult years—but also he was bound by the seasons. So many of his poems contain seasonal observations. This one hints at relationships: our island; at love: the bed; at unrequited loneliness: dreary autumn rain. For Schuyler there were rings of friendship—but also failed romances. There was getting older; memories of bygone days; unfulfilled dreams. October holds all of this. Goodbye October.

A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler Nathan Kernan Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2025 Finishing A Day Like Any Other is like saying goodbye to a dear friend. Indeed, it is over 450 pages of a LIFE. A life like no other. Really. I used to think that Jimmy and I were a lot alike, that we could have been friends—had I gone to NYC in 1982 instead of Chicago. Instead, I met a lot of people like Jimmy. But, no, after reading the book, I see we are not at all alike. I think it’s the poetry I could relate to. So accessible. That made me feel I was sitting there in his SRO having a chat, the noise from the busy NY city streets floating up to us through a dingy window. His city poems, the ones describing flowers, his pastoral ones from Vermont, Great Spruce Head Island, etc. The ease of the “Morning of the Poem”, which, according to the biography took many mornings. Just like the long poem “A Few Days” was composed over several months. I need to keep the biography—not a critica...