The New York School of Beauty
The man who cut James Schuyler’s hair also cuts my hair.
I once heard Schuyler read at the Ninety Second Street Y.
A large man, he sat at a wooden table positioned center stage
and took highly dramatic gulps of water between the reading
of his dead-pan poems.
Carrying my postpartum weight,
I trudge behind my child’s stroller up Hudson Street past
Saint Luke’s and then over to the White Horse Tavern.
I find myself thinking of him, identifying sequentially with
the poet’s size, his last-ditch Episcopalianism, his thirst.
from Cultural Tourism by Mary Maxwell (LongNookBooks, 2012). James Schuyler is pictured above.
From the archive; first posted December 4, 2020.