Failure: A Pulitzer Prize Winner

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Review PRAISE FOR FAILURE "Philip Schultz’s language reminds me of such modern masters as Isaac Rosenberg and Hart Crane. It’s one thing I’ve always admired in his poetry; that and a heartbreaking tenderness that goes beyond mere pity and that is so present in Failure. It’s as if he bears our pain."—Gerald Stern, winner of the National Book Award"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 Read more From the Inside Flap "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 MailerA 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. Read more From the Back Cover ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FAILURE "Philip Schultz's language reminds me of such modern masters as Isaac Rosenberg and Hart Crane. It's one thing I've always admired in his poetry; that and a heartbreaking tenderness that goes beyond mere pity and that is so present in Failure. It's as if he bears our pain." -Gerald Stern, winner of the National Book Award "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 "Call it a poetry of the multiple truths of the all-too-human, the American language profoundly shaped into inclusively, powerfully felt passion. Philip Schultz's Failure is a book of poems of the highest achievement by one of American poetry's longtime masters of the art."--Lawrence Joseph "Plantive and jubilant, the melody dissolves everything between itself and the firmament, underscoring Schultz's remarkable capacity for empathy with his fellow creatures. Here as elsewhere, his resolve to exult, even in the face of desolation and adversity, make Failure a....splendid book." --Floyd Collins, Gettysburg Review Read more About the Author PHILIP SCHULTZ won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems, Failure. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, the Nation, the New Republic, and the Paris Review, among other magazines. In addition, he is the founder and director of the Writers Studio in New York. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. It’s Sunday Morning in Early November and there are a lot of leaves already.I could rake and get a head start.The boys’ summer toys need to be putin the basement. I could clean it outor fix the broken storm window.When Eli gets home from Sunday school,I could take him fishing. I don’t fishbut I could learn to. I could show himhow much fun it is. We don’t do as muchas we used to do. And my wife, there’sso much I haven’t told her lately,about how quickly my soul is aging,how it feels like a basement I keep fillingwith everything I’m tired of surviving.I could take a walk with my wife and tryto explain the ghosts I can’t stop speaking to.Or I could read all those books piling upabout the beginning of the end of understanding . . .Meanwhile, it’s such a beautiful morning,the changing colors, the hypnotic light.I could sit by the window watching the leaves,which seem to know exactly how to fallfrom one moment to the next. Or I could loseeverything and have to begin over again. Talking to Ourselves A woman in my doctor’s office last weekcouldn’t stop talking about Niagara Falls,the difference between dog and deer ticks,how her oldest boy, killed in Iraq, would liewith her at night in the summer grass, singingPuccini. Her eyes looked at me but saw onlythe saffron swirls of the quivering heavens. Yesterday, Mr. Miller, our tidy neighbor,stopped under our lopsided maple to explainhow his wife of sixty years died last monthof Alzheimer’s. I stood there, listening tohis longing reach across the darkness witheach bruised breath of his eloquent singing. This morning my five-year-old asked himselfwhy he’d come into the kitchen. I understoodhe was thinking out loud, personifying himself,but the intimacy of his small voice was surprising. When my father’s vending business was failing,he’d talk to himself while driving, his lipssilently moving, his black eyes deliquescent.He didn’t care that I was there, listening,what he was saying was too important. “Too important,” I hear myself sayingin the kitchen, putting the dishes away,and my wife looks up from her readingand asks, “What’s that you said?” Specimen I turned sixty in Paris last year.We stayed at the Lutetia,where the Gestapo headquarteredduring the war, my wife, two boys, and me,and several old Vietnamese ladiescarrying poodles with diamond collars. Once my father caught a manstealing cigarettes out of oneof his vending machines.He didn’t stop choking himuntil the pool hall stunk of excrementand the body dropped to the floorlike a judgment. When I was last in ParisI was dirt poor, hidingfrom the Vietnam War.One night, in an old church,I considered taking my life.I didn’t know how to be so youngand not belong anywhere, stuckamong so many perplexing melodies. I loved the low white buildings,the ingratiating colors, the ancient light.We couldn’t afford such luxury.It was a matter of pride.My father died bankrupt one weekbefore his sixtieth birthday.I didn’t expect to have a family;I didn’t expect happiness. At the Lutetia everyonedressed themselves like specimensthey’d loved all their lives.Everyone floated downred velvet hallwayslike scintillating musicyou hear only once or twice. Driving home, my father said,“Let anyone steal from youand you’re not fit to live.”I sat there, sliced by traffic lights,not belonging to what he said.I belonged to a scintillatingand perplexing musicI didn’t expect to hear. The Summer People Santos, a strong, friendly man,who built my wife’s sculpture studio,fixed everything I couldn’t,looked angry in town last week.Then he stopped coming. We wonderedif we paid him enough, if he envied us.Once he came over late to help me catch a batwith a newspaper and trash basket.He liked that I laughed at how scared I got.We’re “year rounds,” what the locals callsummer people who live here full time.Always in a hurry, the summer people honk a lot,own bigger cars and houses. Once I beat a guyin a pickup to a parking space, our summer sport.“Lousy New Yorker!” he cried. Every day now men from Guatemala, Ecuador,and Mexico line up at the railroad station.They know that they’re despised,that no one likes having to share their rewards,or being made to feel spiteful. When my uncle Joe showed me the shotgunhe kept near the cash registerto scare the black migrantswho bought his overpriced beer and cold cutsin his grocery outside of Rochester, N.Y.,his eyes blazed like emerald suns.It’s impossible to forget his eyes. At parties the summer peoplewho moved here after 9/11talk about all the things they had to give up.It’s beautiful here, they say, but everythingis tentative and strange,as if the beauty isn’t theirs to enjoy. When I’m tired, my father’s accentscrapes my tongue like a scythe.He never cut our grass or knewwhat grade I was in. He worked days,nights, and weekends, but failed anyway.Late at night, when he was too tired to sleep,he’d stare out the window so powerfullythe world inside and outsideour house would disappear.    In Guatemala, after working all day,Santos studied to be an architect.He suffered big dreams, his wife said.My wife’s studio is magnificent.We’d hear him up there in the dark,hammering and singing, as ifhe were the happiest man alive.Copyright © 2007 by Philip Schultz All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777. Read more