I have been a fan of Jame Schuyler's poetry and the New York School in general for many, many years, so was thrilled to receive this ARC. An intimate and searching literay biography that does a good job of balancing admiration with honesty. Kernan never glosses over the chaos in Schuyler’s life, from repeated breakdowns to long hospitalisations, yet he never loses sight of the poet’s astonishing gift for clarity and beauty. That balance makes the book feel both compassionate and credible.

What I especially liked is the way Kernan shows how Schuyler’s poetry emerges directly from the texture of his days - the weather, a friend’s remarks, a shift of light. Even when Schuyler was living in cramped apartments or drifting through periods of illness, his gaze remained startlingly precise. Kernan makes you feel that attentiveness.

If I had one hesitation, it’s that the detail can occasionally weigh the story down; there are moments when the sheer accumulation of facts slows the flow. But overall, I came away feeling that Kernan has written not just a biography, but a deeply humane portrait of what it means to live a creative life through struggle. Highly recommended.

This book is a comprehensive, well written biography of James Schuyler, a significant American poet and Pulitzer prize winner. It demonstrates the author’s meticulous research, no doubt drawing on the previous work he did editing the “Diary of James Schuyler”, published in 1996.

The title draws no doubt, on the poets idea that meaning and emotional depth lie in the ordinary, the every day, so it’s a fitting homage to Schuyler’s view of the world where no day is truly “like any other“ when seen through the eyes of a poet, observing the world and people around him. “A day like any other” offers an intimate glimpse into the daily life and inner world of one of the most quietly profound poets of the 20th century. Understanding his upbringing and his working life, you can appreciate the human foundation beneath his poetry—one that is marked by fragility, humour, resilience, and a clarity of perception.

The biography begins with Schuyler’s first public reading in 1988, then follows his life chronologically, from his Chicago birth to his formative years in Washington, D.C., and upstate New York, to his immersion in New York City’s literary scene in 1944. There, he met W. H. Auden and became associated with the New York School poets. These included Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and Barbara Guest. Whilst he was probably the most emotionally and vulnerable of the group, they all shared a love of spontaneity and had deep ties to the visual arts particularly abstraction and a rejection of rigid formality. Poetry was for them a lived and personal present tense experience.

Despite mental illness and hospitalisation (He suffered with schizophrenia), Schuyler produced profound work during these challenging times. Living with painter Fairfield Porter in Southampton and summers in Maine influenced his affinity for nature. It was there that he met with Peter Ackroyd, the author who was at Cambridge and knew my brother-in-law, who incidentally was also a poet. Despite poverty and health issues, his later years at the Chelsea Hotel signified a renewal until his death at relatively young age of sixty-seven.

Whether you come to this volume as a devoted fan of Schuyler’s poetry, a student of the New York School, or someone new to his work, as I was, A day like any other is a luminous and unforgettable must read. I have no hesitation in giving this superb work five stars.

My thanks to Farr, Strauss and Giroux, the author Nathan Kernan and to NetGalley for providing an uncorrected digital galley copy.