Intimacy, Epistolarity, and the Work of Queer Mourning in James Schuyler's Poetry

James Schuyler's work demonstrates queer epistolary possibility, especially in "Letter to a Friend" and "The Morning of the Poem." Schuyler's letter-indebted poems make use of key aspects of correspondence: specificity of address, textuality, materiality, and registration of gaps in space and time. With their aid Schuyler exemplifies a distinctive privacy, which clarifies his difference from writers employing both confessional and "personist" poetry—as well as his difference from later theorists who endorse radical openness in the "personism" of Frank O'Hara. In "The Morning of the Poem" Schuyler's method of epistolary intimacy allows him to honor "irreplaceable singularities" of friendship, and also enables him to mourn dead friends and to find comfort for their loss.