David Schubert

[JTolle]

David Schubert (1913-46). A brilliant, truncated poet, the heir of Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, and Wordsworth, among others. He was much admired by Frank O'Hara and James Wright, and is still admired by (and an important influence on) John Ashbery. His sole book of poetry, Initial A, was not published in his lifetime despite Schubert's ability to get individual poems published in some of the most prestigious magazines of his day, and despite some very important friendships with quite a few admired poets and critics.

Schubert suffered in his lifetime many psychologically debilitating hardships including persistent poverty, the suicide of his mother (a young Schubert was the one to find her body), practical abandonment by his father, and, for a short while, homelessness. Nonetheless, he excelled in school, receiving a full scholarship to attend Amherst College where Robert Frost taught at the time. However, Schubert's manic writing habits, coupled with the heavy loads of schoolwork at Amherst, and perhaps a sense of inferiority, took their toll, and even though Frost did his best to hold on to him and help him out, Schubert was forced to leave Amherst after little more than a year.

The later years of Schubert's short life were mixed with joy and grief. He took pleasure in his marriage, his friendships, and his work, but suffered over his inability to publish a book, provide for his family, and to make sense of the trauma he had sustained over the years. Eventually, in a particularly terrible fit, Schubert destroyed the manuscript of a finished novel he had undertaken to write, threatened his beloved wife with a pair of scissors, and fled into a winter night, to be found days later delirious and totally unstable. With the help of some literary friends, Schubert was placed in a top-notch mental institute, where he spent around (I think) two years. Following his release, Schubert had, within a few days, relapsed, and had left the apartment where he was staying, temporarily, with his wife. After being found again, Schubert was taken to a hospital, but soon succumbed to a lung ailment, assumed to be severe bronchitis, at the age of 32.

David Schubert's poetry is, by turns: funny, taut, nervous, melancholy, witty, jumpy, highly lyrical, and rich in puns and wordplay. He is often complex to the point of obscurity, but deeply personal and autobiographical in a way that some critics have claimed marks the beginning of Confessional poetry. But, having been so young and unpolished, I must admit that some of Initial A (finally published by Macmillan in 1961) is good but shruggable, although the best poems are legitimate masterpieces in my eyes.

[JTolle]

One of Schubert's grade-A achievements, and also among Ashbery's favorites:

"Kind Valentine"

She hugs a white rose to her heart—
The petals flare—in her breath, blown;
She'll catch the fruit on her death day—
The flower rooted in the bone.
The face at evening comes for love;
Reeds in the river meet below.
She sleeps, small child, her face a tear;
The dream comes in with stars to go
Into the window, feigning snow.
This is the book that no one knows.
This papered wall holds mythic oaks,
Behind the oaks a castle grows.
Over the door, and over her
(She dies! She wakes!) the seeds gallop.
The child stirs, hits the dumb air, weeps,
Afraid of night's long loving-cup.

Into yourself, live, live, Joanne!
And count the buttons—how they run
To doctor, red chief, lady's man!
Most softly pass, on the stairs down,
The stranger in your evening gown.
Hearing white, inside your grief,
And insane laughter up the roof.
O little wind, come in with dawn—
It is your shadows on the lawn.

Break the pot! and let carnations—
Smell them! they're the very first.
Break the sky, and let come magic
Rain! Let earth come pseudo-tragic
Roses—blossom, unrehearsed.
Head, break! is broken. Dream, so small,
Come in to her. O little child,
Dance on the squills where the winds run wild.

The candles rise in the warm night
Back and forth, the tide is bright.
Slowly, slowly, the waves retreat
Under her wish and under feet.
And over tight breath, tighter eyes,
The mirror ebbs, it ebbs and flows.
And the intern, the driver, speed
To gangrene! But—who knows—suppose
He was beside her! Please, star-bright,
First I see, while in the night
A soft-voiced like a tear, guitar—
It calls a palm coast from afar.
And oh, so far the stars were there
For him to hang upon her hair
Like the white rose he gave, white hot,
While the low sobbing band—it wept
Violets and forget-me-nots.