Elio Schneeman: An Unsung Hero of the NY School [by David Lehman]

 

 

 

Born in Italy during JFK's first year in office, Elio Schneeman (left, as depicted by Pamela Lawton), grew up in  New York City, the son of George and Katie Schneeman, and his youth was spent among the grown-up poets and painters of the New York School's so-called Second Generation. George Schneeman's paintings grace numerous books and journals by NY Schoolers.

Elio has a poem "For Ted," and it conjures up Ted Berrigan "high on heroin," whose memory is honored: "Now and then / you whisper a line or two to me /  from a bearded cypress tree." I quote this poem not only to locate the poet on the map ("E. 9th Street") but because the pace of the lines, the casual stance, the understated last line are all characteristic of the New York School style at its best. 

Schneeman's posthumous collection, "A Found Life" (Telephone Books, 2000) is impressive also for the poet's brand of "minimalism" (to use the term as exemplified by Elaine Equi). Here is the whole of "New Year Reflection" 

With all this air
in my pockets,

once again,

I'm still facing
the dark blue pool
where I drowned. 

Look how much the poet accomplishes in six lines plus two stanza-breaks. This is a poetry of concentration blessedly free of claustrophobia: there is "all this air" around the last-second revelation, which requires no elaboration. 

In its spareness, Schneeman has something vitally in common with Joseph Ceravolo. The deep religiosity of this poet -- he addresses the Lord on intimate terms in "Summer Soup" and "Prayer" -- is a second link to Ceravolo. But the personal sadness, the apprehension of imminent disaster, is especially pronounced in Elio Schneeman's poetry, and so is the tender sensuality: ("I passed by her  bathtub / late in the afternoon") and the gift of describing things as they are ("a faint hammering  / was heard, a few choice / words understood," by a speaker who identifies himself as "a resident of hell" riding the underground. The epiphany that ends the poem does so with gravity and grace: "Who can deny / the simple, undiluted / pleasures of morning?" 

If I worked for Copper Canyon Press I would apply for permission to quote the conclusion of Schneeman's beautiful "Primavera": 

You follow me
through invisible streets

I turn the corner
into a copper canyon.

The sonnets, such as "After Spenser," show a remarkable facility at energizing the Renaissance form with a new idiom:

In the morning I wake with a start,
Silently my love has flown the coop, 
Leaving nothing but her volume of Descartes,
I walk from room to room a total dupe.

Vincent Katz is right: Schneeman's poetry is difficult to categorize. It is often a "poetry of nothingness which is not Zen," but there is also something very rare: the love poem that manages to avoid exaggeration and saccharine and to achieve genuineness. Consider the ending of "Downtown Insomnia," dedicated to the woman whom he loved, a painter:

But now, miles downtown,
I toss
on a sheet of flame

With only your name
on my lips

Your dreams
are paintings

that tell us
of reflected things.,

if only we would listen.

This remarkable young poet with the soul of a prophet died at the age of thirty-five on August 17, 1997.

-- David Lehman

Comments

[Bob Holman]

Thank you, David. Eliot Schneeman’s poems transcend right here on earth.

[lally]

what helms said...elio's presence was like his poetry: undeniably authentically present and yet transcendent at the same time

[lally]

I meant "what holman said" but auto etc.

[Greg Masters]

Elio's poems are forged from a better universe.

[Pamela Lawton]

Thank you, David, for mapping Elio’s work in layers I love.

His poems resound in my mind, among them your choice words.