Air From Canada

So many fine poets were born in the 1920s – Richard Wilbur, Philip Larkin, Anthony Hecht, Donald Justice, Thom Gunn – and most of them, Gunn (b.1929) excepted, are now past their centenary. Three years past his now is the New York poet James Schuyler, who was born on this day in 1923. Here is one of his best, a poem imbued with the 'wonderful freshness' and Nova Scotian light that it describes, but with a very dark edge, and a stark closing image... Air from CanadaA wonderful freshness, airthat billows like bedsheetson a clothesline and the cloudshang in a traffic jam: summerheads home. Evangeline,our light is scoured and NovaScotian and of a clarity thatopens up the huddled massesof the stolid spruce so yousee them in their bristlingindividuality. The otherday, walking among them, Icast my gaze upon the groundin hope of orchids and,pendant, dead, a sharp shadowin the shade, a branch gougedand left me "scarred forever'neath the eye." Not quite. Notthe cut, but the surprise, andhow,…

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