James Schuyler Poem

                

    Hats

A cherry-colored picture hat
of tagal straw, its only trimming
a black-and-white windmill bow
at one side, or in front

A shady hat in silver straw
the brim rolled up
and on the crown a clump
of blue wings from an Indian jay






I love the creepiness of the poems from his The Fireproof Floors of Witley Court: English Songs and Dances.

It's a very interesting exercise in poetic anachronism.

He turns back the clock and writes after the manner of a vanished century with many of the poems in this series, but it's still as though he were a time traveler or spectre haunting the past; one feels his sensitivity to the surface tension of the poem and its alternate reality.

But if he's a ghost there, in the past, he finds ways to make his presence known to those other ghosts.

It leads to some creepy, beautiful effects that are almost reminiscent of William Gibson in their play with sampling time.

I like the way in the poem above horror is couched as admiration.

He's such a subtle poet and his poems are composed of such subtleties.

So many times he ties the Gordian knot and then cuts it, chortling.

He is a stellar jay.