Post by nickme112 on May 31, 2013 16:02:08 GMT -5
Nick Mennona
Philip Schultz
Poetry Introduction
Philip Schultz had to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to be in the position he’s in today. As a Pulitzer Prize winner, recipient of The Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize, winner of an American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters Award, a National Book Award Finalist, and founder/director of The Writers Studio it is mind-boggling how Schultz was one night away from never immersing himself into the field of poetry.
Growing up as a dyslexic, Schultz’s difficulties with words forced teachers, his mother, and private tutors to give up on him. In their eyes, he was a failure. It didn’t help matters either that he lived in the poorest section of Rochester, NY, where nobody had any training to assist him. However, one night, while gazing at the moon and believing that it was interested in his linguistic predicament, Schultz summoned an uncanny force. Through sheer willpower, Schultz navigated around his dyslexia; “[He’d] lie in bed silently imitating the words [his] mother read, imagining the taste, heft and ring of each sound as if it were coming out of [his] mouth” and imagining that “words and their sounds [were] a kind of key with which [he] would open an invisible door to a world previously denied [to him],” and thus spawned his love affair with language and “the first-person voice…that…would spend most of [its] life inventing characters to say all the things [Schultz] wanted to say.” Not surprisingly, his work is as dynamic as his life. Compounded with his dyslexia, writing fiction, starting a school, getting married and starting a family were dynamic events in Schultz’s life that consequently changed his poetry.
Schultz had given up on himself with his dyslexia, he stopped writing poetry for the better part of 15 years, and he failed to enter into the mainstream with his 5 collections before Failure. Yet, this is Schultz’s truth and as he notes, “[you] can hide [the truth] like a signature/ or a birthmark but it’s always there.” Courageously, Schultz embraces his past as a pathway for his future. “Most people spend their lives developing defenses against their feelings,” but Schultz openly embraces his feelings, no matter how painful they are to him. This candor and bluntness in his poetry makes Schultz relatable. Noting upon this fact is Mark Doty, who asserts that “[Schultz’s] poems become a meeting ground, where the inner life of the writer — given form in sharply precise, memorable language — is so available as to make the poem irresistible; we can’t help but bring our own interiority to these words.”
Like the moon that created him, Schultz’s poetry has opened up a seductive door to us, inviting us in so that we can leave irrevocably changed regardless of the dark tone he uses in his writing. Battling heavy themes such as life as an immigrant, family life, love, dyslexia, nihilism, and failure, one can clearly see that Schultz does not like handling easy concepts. He continually challenges himself to improve upon his own poetic terrain. While Tony Hoagland does him the best justice by saying “[Schultz] is one of the least affected of American poets, and one of the fiercest,” I say that Schultz, like failures, is unforgettable, but we all know he is not one.
Word Count: 544
Philip Schultz
Poetry Introduction
Philip Schultz had to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to be in the position he’s in today. As a Pulitzer Prize winner, recipient of The Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize, winner of an American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters Award, a National Book Award Finalist, and founder/director of The Writers Studio it is mind-boggling how Schultz was one night away from never immersing himself into the field of poetry.
Growing up as a dyslexic, Schultz’s difficulties with words forced teachers, his mother, and private tutors to give up on him. In their eyes, he was a failure. It didn’t help matters either that he lived in the poorest section of Rochester, NY, where nobody had any training to assist him. However, one night, while gazing at the moon and believing that it was interested in his linguistic predicament, Schultz summoned an uncanny force. Through sheer willpower, Schultz navigated around his dyslexia; “[He’d] lie in bed silently imitating the words [his] mother read, imagining the taste, heft and ring of each sound as if it were coming out of [his] mouth” and imagining that “words and their sounds [were] a kind of key with which [he] would open an invisible door to a world previously denied [to him],” and thus spawned his love affair with language and “the first-person voice…that…would spend most of [its] life inventing characters to say all the things [Schultz] wanted to say.” Not surprisingly, his work is as dynamic as his life. Compounded with his dyslexia, writing fiction, starting a school, getting married and starting a family were dynamic events in Schultz’s life that consequently changed his poetry.
Schultz had given up on himself with his dyslexia, he stopped writing poetry for the better part of 15 years, and he failed to enter into the mainstream with his 5 collections before Failure. Yet, this is Schultz’s truth and as he notes, “[you] can hide [the truth] like a signature/ or a birthmark but it’s always there.” Courageously, Schultz embraces his past as a pathway for his future. “Most people spend their lives developing defenses against their feelings,” but Schultz openly embraces his feelings, no matter how painful they are to him. This candor and bluntness in his poetry makes Schultz relatable. Noting upon this fact is Mark Doty, who asserts that “[Schultz’s] poems become a meeting ground, where the inner life of the writer — given form in sharply precise, memorable language — is so available as to make the poem irresistible; we can’t help but bring our own interiority to these words.”
Like the moon that created him, Schultz’s poetry has opened up a seductive door to us, inviting us in so that we can leave irrevocably changed regardless of the dark tone he uses in his writing. Battling heavy themes such as life as an immigrant, family life, love, dyslexia, nihilism, and failure, one can clearly see that Schultz does not like handling easy concepts. He continually challenges himself to improve upon his own poetic terrain. While Tony Hoagland does him the best justice by saying “[Schultz] is one of the least affected of American poets, and one of the fiercest,” I say that Schultz, like failures, is unforgettable, but we all know he is not one.
Word Count: 544