Philip Schultz
Philip Schultz
Philip Schultzis an American 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 The God of Loneliness, Selected and New Poems; Failure, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Living in the Past; and The Holy Worm of Praise. He is also the author of Deep Within the Ravine Viking Penguin, 1984), which was the Lamont Poetry...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
CountryUnited States of America
anxiety art escape great imagination life
My imagination was a great place to escape from all the anxiety and disapproval of my life... I had to live in my head... art was a way of making myself feel better.
assume clarity safely
If I get the idea, and I get some clarity on how I feel about that idea, then I can safely assume I'll find the right words. I do have that confidence.
asked grade hitting kids leave perceived placed repeating third
Repeating third grade at a new school, after having been asked to leave my old one for hitting kids who made fun of my perceived stupidity, I was placed in the 'dummy class.'
poet teacher time
As a poet and a teacher, I read all the time. I know I read slowly. I like reading, but I don't read any more than I have to.
failure great life theme
Failure has been the great theme of my life, I think.
doubted
I never doubted my talent. If talent was the circus, then I was its ringmaster and audience, applauding its every move.
letter processing trouble
Letter scrambling and trouble reading is just a small part of dyslexia. It is also an auditory processing problem.
life people
Most people try to avoid cliches. It's my ambition in life to try to get 'em right!
dyslexia poetry
Suddenly, everyone wanted to talk to me, it seemed. And not about my poetry: it was my dyslexia they were most interested in.
job weight
The word 'novel' carries, for me, a weight as ominous, all-consuming and unforgiving as any Job encountered.
advantages dyslexia juggle musical narratives nuances
Being a poet, the advantages of dyslexia are many, affording me sensitivity to the musical nuances of language and the ability to juggle complicated ideas and narratives simultaneously.
based dyslexia figure formulas intuition itself lends method original rote trial trying
Dyslexia lends itself to original thinking, not rote formulas, because you can't do the formulas - you think up your own method based on intuition and instincts. Creativity is trial and error, trying to figure out a way to do something emotionally and intuitively.
airport almost dyslexia gives somewhere station stepped time train traveling wishing
I can't remember a time when I stepped into an airport or train station without wishing I were somewhere else, doing almost anything else. Just thinking about traveling gives me the willies. Traveling and dyslexia don't really get along.
eventually excluded felt imagined kids quote
I eventually just imagined being a little boy who was quote unquote 'normal': who could learn like all the kids around me that I felt excluded from. And I imagined myself into one of these and into someone who could read.