Since Wordsworth, every Romantic poet's dream has been to speak poetry at will; to write, then, would simply be to record. James Schuyler, by dint of long training (read, see, listen to everything, live—and write thousands of poems), has managed that feat, making of himself an Aeolian harp played on by all the winds of circumstance and the spirit. Fortunate in his gifts, his friends and (for the most part) his experience, he has in several books generously given back his version of the world to the world.

Was it inevitable that this good luck brought with it a heavy cost in suffering? The obverse side of sensitivity to pleasure is susceptibility to pain—which is recorded only slightly less fully in [The Morning of the Poem] than the poet's fortunate moments. Shock permeates these poems—the shock of recognition, certainly, but also shock as such. A...