"It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience)"
About this Quote
The sharpest move is the shift from “mysterious” to “outside their own experience.” Schuyler’s target isn’t ignorance; it’s estrangement. Readers don’t merely overestimate difficulty, they misrecognize the source. A poem’s genesis, he implies, is closer to the everyday materials they already possess: attention, sensory detail, a remembered phrase, a mood that won’t sit still. That’s very New York School Schuyler - art not as cathedral, but as street-level perception, a record of consciousness moving through ordinary time.
The subtext is quietly democratic, but also a little accusatory. Treating poetry as alien experience becomes a convenient alibi: if poems come from “elsewhere,” readers can admire from a distance without risking participation, without admitting that their own inner weather could be shaped into form. Schuyler refuses that distance. He invites readers to see composition less as occult transmission than as an extension of the same noticing they do all day - just done with more patience, and fewer excuses.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Schuyler, James. (n.d.). It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience). FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-seems-to-me-that-readers-sometimes-make-the-54945/
Chicago Style
Schuyler, James. "It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience)." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-seems-to-me-that-readers-sometimes-make-the-54945/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience)." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-seems-to-me-that-readers-sometimes-make-the-54945/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
