The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems

Be the first to write a review

All Available Formats + Editions

——

$13.75

NOOK Book

——

$13.75

The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems (eBook) Pub. Date: 4/8/2010 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
$1.86

$23.65

Hardcover

$1.86

$23.65

The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems Pub. Date: 4/8/2010 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

Advertising

Overview

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, a major collection of Schultz’s work, includes poems from his five books (Like Wings, Deep Within the Ravine, The Holy Worm of Praise, Living in the Past, Failure) and fourteen new poems. It 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780547249650
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date: 4/8/2010
Pages: 194
Sales rank: 455,574
Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 0.80 (d)

Meet the Author

PHILIP SCHULTZ won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his most recent 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 an Excerpt

For the Wandering Jews This room is reserved for wandering Jews.
Around me, in other rooms, suitcases whine like animals shut up for the night.

My guardian angel, Stein, fears sleeping twice in the same bed. Constancy brings Cossacks in the dark, he thinks.
You don't explain fear to fear. Despair has no ears, but teeth.

In the next room I hear a woman's laughter
& press my hand to the wall. Car lights burn my flesh to a glass transparency.

My father was born in Novo-Nikolayevka, Ekaterinoslav Guberniya.
Like him, I wear my forehead high, have quick eyes, a belly laugh.
Miles unfold in the palm of my hand.

Across some thousand backyards his stone roots him to the earth like a stake. Alone in bed,
I feel his blood wander through my veins.

As a boy I would spend whole nights at the fair running up the fun house's spinning barrel toward its magical top,
where I believed I would be beyond harm, at last.

How I would break my body to be free of it,
night after night, all summer long, this boy climbing the sky's turning side, against all odds,

as though to be one with time,
going always somewhere where no one had been before,
my arms banging at my sides like wings.

The Artist & His Mother: After Arshile Gorky Such statuesque immobility; here we have it:
the world of form. Colors muted, a quality of masks with fine high brows. Light & its absence.
Alchemy. The hands are unfinished. But what could they hold? The transitory bliss of enduring wonder? Mother, Mother & Son;
here we have it: consanguinity. The darkness inside color. Space. In the beginning there was space.
It held nothing. What could it hold? Time?
The continuum? Mother & Son, forms suspended in color. Silence. Her apron a cloud of stillness swallowing her whole. Her eyes roots of a darker dimension. Absence. Here we have it:
the world of absence. Light holds them in place.
The pulse of time is felt under the flesh,
the flesh of color. Continuum. You feel such immensity. The anger of form. The woman locked in the Mother; the man in the Son; the Son in the Mother. Their hands do not touch. What could they touch? Here we have it: the world of gift. The gift too terrible to return. But how could it be returned? In the beginning there was anger. Mother & Son. The islands of time.
The passion to continue. Such statuesque immobility.
The hands, the hands cannot be finished.

The Stranger in Old Photos You see him over my uncle Al's left shoulder eating corn at a Sunday picnic & that's him behind my parents on a boardwalk in Atlantic City

smiling out of focus like a rejected suitor
& he's the milkman slouched frozen crossing our old street ten years before color & his is the face above mine in Times Square

blurring into the crowd like a movie extra's
& a darkness in his eyes as if he knew his face would outlast him
& he's tired of living on the periphery of our occasions.

These strangers at bus stops, sleepwalkers caught forever turning a corner - I always wondered who they were between photos when they weren't posing & if they mattered.

It's three this morning, a traffic light blinks yellow yellow
& in my window my face slips into the emptiness between glares.
We are strangers in our own photos. Our strangeness has no source.

Letter from Jake: August 1964
Never mind that uncle business my name is Jake.
In college they try every thing there is this girl at Wegmans supermarket who is to busy to join protests who is right takes more than me to figure out. Cohen died last Monday. He owned the deli on Joseph Ave. The democrat running for supervisor is a Puerto Rican. Don't ask me why.

You are young and have to take things as they come. Some day you will find your real niche. I wrote poetry to but this July I'm a stagehand 40 years. I've seen every movie Paramount made believe me. Now theres a union but I remember when you was happy just to work.
Meantime have a ball. Yrs truly now has kidney trouble plus diabetic condition, heart murmur,
cataract in rt eye. Yr mother Lillian is well to.
Cohen was just 58. We went to school together. Loews is closing in October. If you ask me the last five rows was no good for cinemascope.
Yrs truly,
Jake

Customer Reviews

Be the first to write a review

( 0 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(0)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble