'Use your words . . . and communicate'

 

“The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.” – James Schuyler

 

A Pulitzer Prize-winnng poet (for The Morning of the Poem), Schuyler was born in Chicago on Nov. 9, 1923.  A central member of the “New York School” in the 1960s and ’70s, he published his first major poetry work Freely Espousing in 1969.  For Saturday’s Poem here is Schuyler’s,

 

                                             The Day Gets Slowly Started

 

The day gets slowly started.
A rap at the bedroom door,
bitter coffee, hot cereal, juice
the color of sun which
isn’t out this morning. A
cool shower, a shave, soothing
Noxzema for razor burn. A bed
is made. The paper doesn’t come
until twelve or one. A gray shine
out the windows. “No one
leaves the building until
those scissors are returned.”
It’s that kind of a place.
Nonetheless, I’ve seen worse.
The worried gray is melting
into sunlight. I wish I’d
brought my book of enlightening
literary essays. I wish it
were lunch time. I wish I had
an appetite. The day agrees
with me better than it did, or,
better, I agree with it. I’ll
slide down a sunslip yet, this
crass September morning.