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Grace Schulman

b. 1935
Black and white headshot of writer Grace Schulman

Poet and editor Grace Schulman was born Grace Waldman in New York City, the only child of a Polish Jewish immigrant father and a seventh-generation American mother. She studied at Bard College and earned her BA from American University and her PhD from New York University. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, and served as the poetry editor of the Nation from 1972 to 2006. She also directed the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center from 1973 to 1985. She has published nine collections of poetry, including Again, the Dawn: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2022 (Turtle Point Press, 2022) and Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems (Harper Collins, 2022). Her collection of essays, First Loves and Other Adventures (2010), reflects on her life as a writer and reader.

Typically written in a lucid free verse that occasionally reaches vatic heights, Schulman’s poems often take on subjects of art, history, and faith. Schulman’s history is usually that of her beloved New York City, where she has lived and worked as a dedicated poetry advocate all her life. Earthly moments and details of city life constantly suggest larger spiritual questions. Poet Ron Slate has described Schulman as “not only a poet of praise, but one who addresses the grounding questions of this mode. How and why do we find beauty in adversity?”

Schulman names Hopkins, Donne, Shakespeare, Dante, Whitman, and Marianne Moore as her influences. When Schulman was a teenager she was introduced to Moore, who had a profound effect on her poetics. Schulman wrote on the poet in a critical study, Marianne Moore: The Poetry of Engagement (1986), and edited The Poems of Marianne Moore (2004). Schulman has received numerous awards for her work, including the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, and Pushcart prizes. She has received fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her work has been published in the Nation, the New Yorker, and numerous other magazines and journals, and appeared in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1998.

Schulman was married to the scientist Jerome L. Schulman before his death in 2016. She lives in New York City and East Hampton.

Poems by Grace Schulman
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Bibliography

POETRY

  • Burn down the Icons , Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1976.
  • Hemispheres, Sheep Meadow Press (New York, NY), 1984.
  • For That Day Only, Sheep Meadow Press (Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY), 1994.
  • The Paintings of Our Lives, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2001.
  • Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2002.
  • The Broken String, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2007.
  • Without a Claim, Mariner Books (Boston, MA), 2013.

 

OTHER

  • (Editor) Ezra Pound: A Collection of Criticism, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1974.
  • (Translator) T. Carmi, At the Stone of Losses (poems), University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1983.
  • Marianne Moore: The Poetry of Engagement, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1986.
  • (Editor) The Poems of Marianne Moore, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.
  • First Loves and Other Adventures, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2010.

Contributor of poems, articles, translations, and reviews to poetry journals and magazines, including Hudson Review, Ms., New Yorker, New Republic, Paris Review, Antaeus, Grand Street, Yale Review, and Kenyon Review. Poems included in the Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1998, edited by Harold Bloom, and in Pushcart Prizes 21 and Pushcart Prizes 23.
 

 
 

Further Readings

PERIODICALS

  • American Literature, October, 1987, Laurence Stapleton, review of Marianne Moore: The Poetry of Engagement, p. 469.
  • American Poetry Review, September, 1977, review of Burn down the Icons, p. 45.
  • Booklist, March 15, 1977, review of Burn down the Icons, p. 1067; February 15, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of The Paintings of Our Lives, p. 1110.
  • Choice, June, 1977, review of Burn down the Icons, p. 538; May, 1987, review of Marianne Moore, p. 1400.
  • Hudson Review, spring, 1977, review of Burn Down the Icons, p. 120; spring, 1985, review of Hemispheres, p. 167.
  • Journal of Modern Literature, fall-winter, 1988, Robert W. Buttel, review of Marianne Moore, p. 386.
  • Library Journal, October 15, 1986, Cristanne Miller, review of Marianne Moore, p. 97.
  • New Yorker, November 21, 1994, review of For That Day Only, p. 133.
  • New York Times Book Review, July 3, 1977, review of Burn down the Icons, p. 7; April 7, 1985, L. M. Rosenberg, review of Hemispheres, p. 12; February 1, 1987, Warren Woessner, review of Marianne Moore, p. 21; October 30, 1994, Robert Richman, review of For That Day Only, p. 12; April 15, 2001, Melanie Rehak, review of Paintings of Our Lives, p. 22.
  • Poetry, December, 1985, Sandra M. Gilbert, review of Hemispheres, p. 161; May, 1995, Robert B. Shaw, review of For That Day Only, p. 104.
  • Publishers Weekly, August 5, 1983, review of At the Stone of Losses, p. 78; September 21, 1984, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Hemispheres, p. 84; December 18, 2000, review of The Paintings of Our Lives, p. 73.
  • Sewanee Review, winter, 2001, George Core, review of The Paintings of Our Lives, p. 2.
  • Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1995, review of For That Day Only, p. 66.
  • World Literature Today, winter, 1978, review of Burn down the Icons, p. 118; spring, 1995, review of For That Day Only, p. 365.