Memoirous

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...