Prologue: (Tuesday, November 15, 1988) -- A dream of the great Midwest (1650-1923) -- Lover's leap lost/Its romance (1923-1935) -- The landscape shimmered (1935-1941) -- Curses flap into the air like starlings (1941-1943) -- Gossip and opera (1944-1947) -- We all lay on the island beach together (1947-1948) -- Men are such boys (1948-1949) -- Salute (1949-1951) -- I was a poet (1952) -- Music, swimming at night, plays, poems, love and quarrels (1953-1954) -- Between these lines I write your name (1955-1956) -- You see all these frustrating things happen (1957-1960) -- Now and then a human being (1960-1962) -- But this is not/Your poem, your poem I may/Never write (1962-1966) -- Vagabond shoes (1967-1970) -- Pain doesn't hurt; it's a sensation, like a kiss(1971) -- After five o'clock a kind of endlessness sets in (1971-1973) -- This dark apartment (1974-1979) -- Never trust blonds from Sherman Oaks (1979-1985) -- In bell-like blue (1985-1991)

"The first biography of the poet James Schuyler, the Pulitzer Prize winner who helped shape the New York School of poetry in the 1960s"--