The Broken String: Poems

By Grace Schulman

An award-winning contemporary poet celebrates the joyful, impossible language of music in this collection that “surpasses her distinguished previous work” (Harold Bloom).
 
One of the finest poets writing today, Grace Schulman finds order in art and nature that enables her to stand fast in a threatened world. The title refers to Itzhak Perlman’s performance of a violin concerto with a snapped string, which inspires a celebration of life despite limitations. For her, song imparts endurance: Thelonious Monk evokes Creation; John Coltrane’s improvisations embody her own heart’s desire to “get it right on the first take”; the wind plays a harp-shaped oak; and her immigrant ancestors remember their past by singing prayers on a ship bound for New York. In the words of Wallace Shawn, “When I read her, she makes me want to live to be four hundred years old, because she makes me feel that there is so much out there, and it’s unbearable to miss any of it.”
 
“Grace Shulman has developed into one of the permanent poets of her generation.” —Harold Bloom
 
“[An] extended paean to the triumph of art over adversity or, perhaps, to the birth of beauty in adversity.” —The Seattle Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 22, 2008
• ISBN: 9780547347851

Grace Schulman

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).

Book preview

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Contents

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Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

1

The Broken String

The Letter B

The Fifth of July

Query

Headstones

Blue in Green

The Footbridge

Kol Nidrei, September 2001

2

First Nights

Orson’s Shadow

Thelonious Himself

Origins

Collectors

Art Tatum at the Gee-Haw Stables

Joy

3

The Horror

Death

St. Sulpice

The Crow Man

Borders

4

From the New World

Apples

Rain Downtown

Speak, Memory

The Row

Late Snow

In Place of Belief

5

Readers

Northern Mockingbird

Chosen

Walk!

In the Foreground

Lesson From the Coin

Loss

Cimicifuga

Harp Song

Waves

Notes

First Mariner Books edition 2008

Copyright © 2007 by Grace Schulman

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Schulman, Grace.

The broken string / Grace Schulman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-44370-3

ISBN-10: 0-618-44370-3

1. Music—Poetry. 2. New York (N.Y.)—Poetry. 3. Long Island (N.Y.)—Poetry. I. Title.

PS3569.C538B76 2007

811'.54—dc22 2006026928

ISBN 978-0-547-08598-2 (pbk.)

eISBN 978-0-547-34785-1

v2.1115

My thanks to the editors of the following journals in which these poems appeared, often in earlier versions: American Scholar: Headstones. Atlantic Monthly: Cimicifuga. Barrow Street: Late Snow. Cimarron Review: Chosen, Harp Song, Loss, Lesson from the Coin, Rain Downtown, Waves. DoubleTake: In the Foreground. Georgia Review: Art Tatum at the Gee-Haw Stables, The Broken String, First Nights. Kenyon Review: The Letter B, The Fifth of July. Michigan Quarterly Review: Kol Nidrei, September 2001. Paris Review: The Footbridge. Pleiades: Joy. Prairie Schooner: Origins, Orson’s Shadow, Speak, Memory. Rattapallax: Blue in Green. Sewanee Review: Apples (as Apples on Lower Fifth Avenue), From the New World, Query, Readers, Thelonious Himself. Western Humanities Review: The Crow Man, Death, The Horror, The Row.

Headstones received the American Scholar Award for Best Poem of 2004. First Nights was reprinted in Never Before: Poems about First Experiences, edited by Laure-Anne Bosselar. In the Foreground reappeared in 110 Stories, edited by Ulrich Baer. Kol Nidrei, September 2001 was heard on www.fathom.com. Apples was reprinted in the Poetry Calendar 2007, edited by Shafiq Naz.

I’m grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for endowing this collection. My thanks to Baruch College, CUNY, for their continuing faith, and to the MacDowell Colony, for freedom to pursue the work.

For JEROME L. SCHULMAN

The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

1

The Broken String

1

When Itzhak Perlman raised his violin

and felt the string snap, he sank and looked down

at legs unfit to stand and cross the stage

for a replacement. He bowed to the maestro,

played radiant chords, and finished the concerto

with the strings he had. Rage forced low notes

as this surf crashes on rock, turns, and lifts.

Later, he smiled and said it’s what you do:

not just play the score, but