Grace Schulman’s Strange Paradise: Portrait of a Marriage surpasses its restrictive subtitle. Of course, the 57-year marriage the author describes could only be hers, but her narrative transcends an exposé of the life of two individuals made one unbreakable couple, even when separated. Schulman’s tome is a tribute to writer friends, deceased and still thriving, who compose a veritable who’s who among the literary establishment. It is a testament to the remarkable healing power of poetry. It is a psalm to music, indeed the soundtrack of her life of the mind. Ultimately, it is her ode to love, a love song in itself about her remarkable life and union with virologist Jerome Schulman, who passed away in 2016. And it is even more—an opportunity for all people in a deep relationship to reflect on the kind of partner they have been and could be.
Schulman’s prodigious achievements include the Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry. Beginning her writing career as a journalist, she became poetry editor of The Nation for 34 years and director of the 92nd Street Y for 22 years. She remains Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, where she has inspired students, including me, for more than four decades.
Reading Strange Paradise is much like experiencing Schulman’s poetry. She continually steps into the fresh air after an encounter with her husband, a friend, a colleague, or her work to capture the turning points of her life. Consider some of these lyrical gems: upon choosing between a long-term relationship and her freedom: “My love was losing me the resolve to go my own way.” About learning to write better poetry from her dear friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marianne Moore: “I woke to her verbs.” Of her youthful, bold border crossings in Israel to the Arab village of Qalkilya: “Borders summoned me.” When she and her husband visited Greece before their marriage: “In Hydra we looked death in the face. Or was it life at its highest elevation?” Of her many choices: “Despite its happy sound, freedom is terrible because of the entire responsibility for each choice among alternatives.” Reflecting on the death of her husband: “However close your union, you live apart, alone. Your freedom of choice, terrible in its way, is existentially important.” And of the finality of loss: “My walks through the city and country were not cures but bandages.”
Yet Schulman’s spirit summons us to triumphs in the depth of despair: “I’ll go through a normal morning when suddenly grief arrives in a high whitecap wave: after another lull, the comber rises and flattens me. Still, I find the breaker’s aftermath a place for work that clarifies. In the northeaster at sea a dinghy comes, splintered, in need of repair. I climb on board and try to bail it out. I go on.”
Schulman’s life-affirming book reminds us of the binary existence in which we find ourselves, not an either/or, but an acceptance, an appreciation of the pleasures, pains, joys, and sorrows that we must embrace if we are to live a life worth living.
Schulman’s prodigious achievements include the Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry. Beginning her writing career as a journalist, she became poetry editor of The Nation for 34 years and director of the 92nd Street Y for 22 years. She remains Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, where she has inspired students, including me, for more than four decades.
Reading Strange Paradise is much like experiencing Schulman’s poetry. She continually steps into the fresh air after an encounter with her husband, a friend, a colleague, or her work to capture the turning points of her life. Consider some of these lyrical gems: upon choosing between a long-term relationship and her freedom: “My love was losing me the resolve to go my own way.” About learning to write better poetry from her dear friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marianne Moore: “I woke to her verbs.” Of her youthful, bold border crossings in Israel to the Arab village of Qalkilya: “Borders summoned me.” When she and her husband visited Greece before their marriage: “In Hydra we looked death in the face. Or was it life at its highest elevation?” Of her many choices: “Despite its happy sound, freedom is terrible because of the entire responsibility for each choice among alternatives.” Reflecting on the death of her husband: “However close your union, you live apart, alone. Your freedom of choice, terrible in its way, is existentially important.” And of the finality of loss: “My walks through the city and country were not cures but bandages.”
Yet Schulman’s spirit summons us to triumphs in the depth of despair: “I’ll go through a normal morning when suddenly grief arrives in a high whitecap wave: after another lull, the comber rises and flattens me. Still, I find the breaker’s aftermath a place for work that clarifies. In the northeaster at sea a dinghy comes, splintered, in need of repair. I climb on board and try to bail it out. I go on.”
Schulman’s life-affirming book reminds us of the binary existence in which we find ourselves, not an either/or, but an acceptance, an appreciation of the pleasures, pains, joys, and sorrows that we must embrace if we are to live a life worth living.
