The Paintings of Our Lives

by Schulman, Grace

• ISBN13: 9780618086221
• ISBN10: 0618086226
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-02-13
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Grace Schulman's fourth and Tnest collection, THE PAINTINGS OF OUR LIVES, celebrates earthly things while discovering inner lives. As THE NEW YORKER wrote of her previous book, "Schulman's beautiful poems are deft and intimate without ever becoming confessional." Here are poems of love and marriage, including a psalm for the poet's anniversary and a portrayal of her parents dancing in the Depression. Moving outward, Schulman identiTes with the hungers, sorrows, and joys of Chaim Soutine, Margaret Fuller, Paul Celan, and Henry James. "Prayer," a Yom Kippur ghazal, is a vision of the unity of warring people. The title poem embodies the perception that life's events, though seemingly random, have an order akin to an unseen painting. In a remarkable sonnet sequence, which Marilyn Hacker has praised as "an elegiac masterpiece," Schulman confronts her mother's death by considering the rites of many cultures, including ancient ritual objects we cherish as art. She regards such concern in light of the Netherlandish painters, who gave "more life to violets, their ‘thisness' caught."

Author Biography

Grace Schulman is the author many acclaimed books of poetry, including Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. For her poetry she has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the Aiken-Taylor Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and three Pushcart prizes. Schulman is a distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She is a former director of the Poetry Center (1978–1984) and a former poetry editor of The Nation (1971–2006).

Table of Contents

I
Prayer	3	(2)
God Speaks	5	(1)
Eve's Unnaming	6	(2)
Chaim Soutine	8	(2)
Poem Ending with a Phrase from the Psalms	10	(1)
Psalm for an Anniversary	11	(2)
Balm in Gilead	13	(1)
No Strings	14	(1)
Carnegie Hill Birdlore	15	(1)
Blue Dawn	16	(1)
In the Cafe	17	(1)
December	18	(3)
II
American Solitude	21	(3)
Storm Watch	24	(1)
Young Woman Drawing, 1801	25	(1)
Black and White	26	(2)
Margaret Fuller	28	(2)
The Dancers	30	(2)
Brooklyn Bridge	32	(3)
Under the City	35	(2)
Elegy Written in the Conservatory Garden	37	(3)
Henry James Revisiting, 1904	40	(2)
Street Colors	42	(2)
The Designer's Notebook	44	(2)
Mostly Mozart	46	(3)
III
The Paintings of Our Lives	49	(10)
Mosaic
Walking in Paris	51	(2)
The Castle	53	(1)
Recovery	54	(1)
Naming	55	(4)
Last Requests	59	(18)
One Year Without Mother
What Can You Believe?	61	(1)
The Piano	62	(1)
Things	63	(1)
Ceremony	64	(1)
Words in the Dark	65	(1)
Ring Sale	66	(1)
Eagle	67	(1)
The Fall	68	(1)
Keeper	69	(1)
A Goldsmith in His Shop	70	(1)
The Lesson of a Tree	71	(1)
Lamentation Scene	72	(1)
Offering	73	(1)
Credo	74	(1)
Requiem	75	(2)
Notes	77

Excerpts

POEM ENDING WITH A PHRASE FROM THE PSALMSHere where loss spins the hickorys dry leaves, rolls miles under wheels, and bleaches reeds that shone wine-red, I invoke a rose still rising like a choir, past its prime on a spindly bush that bore scarce blooms, as I wake to hear a jay screech like a gate swung open, and see your hand enfolding mine on linen: TEACH US TO NUMBER OUR DAYS.Copyright 2001 by Grace Schulman

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Excerpted from The Paintings of Our Lives: Poems by Grace Schulman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.