Philip Schultz
Pultizer Prize-winning Poet
“Philip Schultz is a hell of a poet, one of the very best of his generation, full of slashing language, good rhythms, surprises, and the power to leave you meditating in the cave of his poems.” —Norman Mailer
“Philip Schultz’s poems have long since earned their own place in American poetry. His stylistic trademarks are his great emotional directness and his intelligent haranguing—of god, the reader, and himself. He is one of the least affected of American poets, and one of the fiercest.” —Tony Hoagland
One of American poetry's longtime masters of the art, Philip Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and the founder/director of The Writers Studio, a private school for fiction and poetry writing based in New York City. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Failure (Harcourt 2007), winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. These poems give voice to failures of many kinds—yet they are full of tenderness, empathy, and heartbreaking honesty, giving praise to the joy of life as well. His other collections include The God of Loneliness: New and Selected Poems, Living in the Past (2004), and The Holy Worm of Praise (2002), both published by Harcourt. He is also the author of Deep Within the Ravine (Viking 1984), recipient of The Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize; Like Wings (Viking 1978), winner of an American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters Award as well as a National Book Award nomination; and the poetry chapbook, My Guardian Angel Stein (1986).
His work has been published in The New Yorker, Partisan Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Slate, among other magazines. He is the recipient of a Fullbright Fellowship and a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He also received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1981), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1985), as well as the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine.
He lives in East Hampton, New York, with his wife, sculptor Monica Banks, and their two sons, Elias and August.
About THE GOD OF LONELINESS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (2010)
Philip Schultz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, has been celebrated for his singular vision of the American immigrant experience and Jewish identity, his alternately fierce and tender portrayal of family life, and his rich and riotous evocation of city streets. His poems have found enthusiastic audiences among readers of Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Slate, The New Yorker, and other publications. His willingness to face down the demons of failure and loss, in his previous book particularly, make him a poet for our times, a poet who can write “If I have to believe in something / I believe in despair.” Yet he remains oddly undaunted: “sometimes, late at night / we, my happiness and I, reminisce / lifelong antagonists / enjoying each other’s company.” The God of Loneliness is a volume to cherish, from “one of the least affected of American poets, and one of the fiercest” (Tony Hoagland), and it will be an essential addition to the history of American poetry.
About FAILURE (2007)
A driven immigrant father, an old poet, Isaac Babel in the author’s dreams—Philip Schultz gives voice to failures in poems that are direct and wry. He evokes other lives, too—family, beaches, dogs, the pleasures of marriage, New York City in the 1970s, “when nobody got up before noon, wore a suit/or joined anything”—and a mind struggling with revolutions both interior and exterior. Failure is a superb new collection from one of America’s great poets.
Review of The God of Loneliness by Mark Doty, East Hampton Star
