James Schuyler, recipient of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, belongs with John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara to the first generation of New York School poets. Just the Thing makes him the first of that remarkable constellation of poets to have his letters published. Schuyler is the perfect letter writer, one who seeks to amuse and inform, who has a great sense of humour, lively and original opinions, an ear for gossip and the tart tongue to properly serve it, and who is a memorable phrase maker.