GRACE SCHULMAN’S newest poetry collection is The Broken String (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Her latest books of poems are Days of Wonder: New and Collected Poems (2002) and The Paintings of Our Lives (2001). Honors for her poetry include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Aiken Taylor Award, and the Delmore Schwartz Award. Editor of The Poems of Marianne Moore, she is Distinguished Professor of English, Baruch College, C.U.N.Y. She has served as director of the Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y (1974-84), and poetry editor of the Nation (1971-2006). She lives in New York City.
Brief Interview with Grace Schulman
Since we’re currently in the throes of winter, describe your version of summer in several fragments:
Hostas poke up like knives before they soften and unfurl…Full moon white on black asphalt…The fountain rises and falls like a horse’s mane in wind…Yellow roses outgrowing their trellis…Jerry reading under a straw hat, under the deck umbrella…
Breakfast or brunch, and if you could eat anything without consequence, what would you have?
My appetite awakens only for cocktails and dinner, but my fantasy food before that is breakfast bacon in a microwave, plus stimulating conversation to start the day.
What are your favorite songs to drive to?
Schubert’s Impromptu #3 in G Flat; Bill Evans, Waltz for Debby. Over and over, when I’m not listening to Leonard Lopate or Faith Middleton on NPR.
Tell us about the last time you remember laughing really hard?
A few minutes ago. My husband, Jerry, has a light touch, and he’s given to whimsey.Example: “The flies are gone. Perhaps they know something we don’t, and I hope it’s just a thunderstorm.” Well, hard to transcribe. It has to be seen and heard.
If you could wake up anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would it be?
At home in bed with my husband. (I’m writing this in our hideaway, a little house by the sea on the East End of Long Island, where we’ve gone to read and write for a week before classes begin. For me, this is paradise.)