While Schuyler knows exactly how the orthodox modern lyric operates, he is much more likely to ask "What is a / poem, anyway?" and to keep on trying to concoct one out of fleeting impressions, thoughts that they trigger, bits of useless information …, quotes from conversations, and whatever else turns up on the nonce. His poems [in the Morning of the Poem] often resemble journal entries, and he continually flirts with the dangers of going flat, turning cute, getting sentimental, thin, or prolix. Hence a part of his charm and fascination. He invites us to challenge him, to test his sensibility, to catch him in a weak moment. Ideally, a Schuyler poem keeps mildly startling us…. Sometimes [its] movement is a matter of sound effects, as in "Good Morning."… His lyricism betrays him sometimes into mechanical chiming, as at the end of "June 30, 1974," but more often he proves that...