"One tends to write beyond what's needed"
About this Quote
A poet admitting he overwrites is less confession than craft note: the real subject is excess as both temptation and method. Schuyler’s line lands with a dry shrug, but it’s also a quiet rebuke to the fantasy of “necessary” language. In poetry, necessity is a moving target; what looks like surplus is often where texture, temperament, and time leak in.
Schuyler came up with the New York School, a scene that prized immediacy, gossip, weather, errands, and the radiance of the everyday. His best work is famously “baggy” in the good sense: it wanders, notices, doubles back, and lets the mind show its seams. So “beyond what’s needed” reads like a description of attention itself. He’s not just talking about word count; he’s talking about a sensibility that refuses to edit the world down to a thesis.
The subtext is a gentle argument against utilitarian art. “Needed” belongs to memos, deadlines, and moral lessons; Schuyler’s lyric voice lives in the overage, the margin, the afterthought. The phrasing “one tends to” also matters: it’s impersonal, almost sociological, turning a private habit into a human tic. That deflection is classic Schuyler - modest, self-aware, slightly amused at his own mind’s sprawl.
Contextually, it’s a poet negotiating the pressure to be lean, to be modern in the approved way. He answers with a sideways credo: the unnecessary is where life is.
Schuyler came up with the New York School, a scene that prized immediacy, gossip, weather, errands, and the radiance of the everyday. His best work is famously “baggy” in the good sense: it wanders, notices, doubles back, and lets the mind show its seams. So “beyond what’s needed” reads like a description of attention itself. He’s not just talking about word count; he’s talking about a sensibility that refuses to edit the world down to a thesis.
The subtext is a gentle argument against utilitarian art. “Needed” belongs to memos, deadlines, and moral lessons; Schuyler’s lyric voice lives in the overage, the margin, the afterthought. The phrasing “one tends to” also matters: it’s impersonal, almost sociological, turning a private habit into a human tic. That deflection is classic Schuyler - modest, self-aware, slightly amused at his own mind’s sprawl.
Contextually, it’s a poet negotiating the pressure to be lean, to be modern in the approved way. He answers with a sideways credo: the unnecessary is where life is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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