Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

James Schuyler's "Having My Say So" captures the intensely personal and almost confessional voice of a speaker caught up in the throes of unexpected, perhaps even forbidden, love. The poem is filled with a sense of longing and admiration, intertwined with the speaker's self-consciousness about the nature of their emotions and the appropriateness of expressing them.

The opening lines, "What a sweet dear good boy he is, I said aloud to the empty room," set the tone for the poem—a mix of tenderness and solitude. The speaker's declaration to an empty room highlights the private, almost secretive nature of their feelings, as if the love being described is something that exists in isolation, away from the public eye or the object of their affection.

Schuyler skillfully juxtaposes the speaker's feelings of love with a sense of hesitation and self-doubt. The rhetorical questions, "Surely it’s undignified for a gent to want to take another / gent bouquets, and absurd?" and "Surely it’s an incredible invasion of someone else’s privacy to sit / around writing unsolicited poems to and about him?" reveal the speaker's internal conflict. Despite recognizing the potential absurdity and invasion of privacy in their actions, the speaker cannot help but express their love, capturing the uncontrollable and irrational nature of romantic feelings.

The poem also delves into the act of observing and remembering a lover's physical details, with the speaker describing the beloved's features in vivid, almost worshipful detail. The focus on specific features, like "the way his wide eyebrows uniquely die away in a haze of fine short hairs" and "the crinkled pink of a new small scar," demonstrates the speaker's deep affection and attention to the beloved's every detail. However, the speaker's admission of not remembering the color of the beloved's eyes—"but if I’m such a lover why can’t I remember the color of his eyes?"—adds a layer of vulnerability and imperfection to the portrayal of love. This moment of forgetfulness contrasts with the otherwise meticulous observations and suggests that love is not just about physical details but also about the overall impression and emotions that a person evokes.

Schuyler's use of language in "Having My Say So" is playful and rich with imagery, blending everyday language with poetic flourishes. The phrase "That’s not my sleeve, that’s my heart" exemplifies this blend, as it captures the speaker's deep emotional investment in a simple, yet poignant, image. The reference to the moon—"Moon! look down and see the small dark pit of your reflection on this / pale shaded plain of flesh"—further heightens the poem's romantic and introspective tone, invoking the moon as a witness to the speaker's love and longing.

The closing lines of the poem, "I must get back to work, / but first I’ll look at the clock and imagine where he is," return to the theme of separation and the mundane realities that intrude upon the speaker's romantic reverie. Even as the speaker acknowledges the need to return to their daily routine, the act of imagining the beloved's whereabouts suggests that thoughts of love continue to permeate their consciousness, even in the most ordinary moments.

Overall, "Having My Say So" is a deeply personal exploration of love, filled with the contradictions and complexities that often accompany intense emotions. Schuyler captures the speaker's struggle between the desire to express love and the awareness of its potential impropriety, creating a poem that resonates with the universal experience of grappling with the intensity of romantic feelings. The poem's rich imagery, introspective tone, and playful language make it a poignant reflection on the nature of love and the ways in which it shapes our thoughts and actions.

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