Life & Wisdom Quote by James Schuyler

Schuyler’s line swats away a romantic myth poets are often tempted to keep alive: that art can be pure private weather, sealed off from other people. He starts with craft, not confession. “The aim…is first to make something” frames poetry as manufacture: an object assembled out of materials, subject to choices, cuts, and constraints. That’s a distinctly mid-century corrective to the cult of the inspired soul. Schuyler, a New York School poet, lived among painters, parties, talk, and daily minutiae; he understood art as made in company, in a city, in time. The poem is less a diary entry than a built thing you can hand to someone.

The second clause lands with quiet inevitability: if your medium is words, you’re already in the business of address. Even when a poem tries to be hermetic, its very hermeticism is a signal. Syntax is social. Diction carries class, region, era. Tone implies an audience, even if it’s an imagined one. Schuyler’s subtext is a gentle indictment of the poet who wants credit for expression without the obligations of being understood. You can’t claim language and then pretend you’re not making contact.

It’s also a defense of clarity that doesn’t feel like moralizing. Communication here isn’t a TED Talk “message”; it’s the unavoidable residue of making. To shape words into a “something” is to organize attention, to imply values, to invite another mind to follow your path. Schuyler’s pragmatism turns out to be radical: the poem is an object, and objects enter the world.