The Letters of James Schuyler to Frank O’Hara

James Schuyler William Corbett, editor

Pearl Without Price,

First the worst: your five dollar check bounced. N’import. I made it good, and you can pay me back when … the primroses come back to 49th Street.

Everybody is sick. The boys [Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale] from air travel, me with a bug in the gut that keeps me lolling in the can. And the streets are swimming in swill, like the opening of Bleak House.

Arthur thumbs-downed the apt on 21st Street, and we’re going to live in the Chelsea!

Poet Mark Ford has described the letters of James Schuyler as “witty, graceful, sophisticated, and gossipy.” Particularly poignant are these Schuyler letters to fellow poet Frank O’Hara. Entertaining and transcendently poetic, they are the portrait of a friendship between two great New York School poets.