Failure: A Poetry Collection

by Philip Schultz

Overview

This superb Pulitzer Prize–winning collection gives voice to failure with a wry, deft touch from one of this country’s most engaging and uncompromising poets. In Failure, Philip Schultz evokes the pleasures of family,marriage, beaches, and dogs; New York City in the 1970s; revolutions both interior and exterior; and the terrors of 9/11 with a compassion that demonstrates he is a master of the bittersweet and fierce, the wondrous and direct, and the brilliantly provocative. Filled with poems of "heartbreaking tenderness that [go] beyond mere pity" (Gerald Stern), Failure is a collection to savor from this major American poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780156031288
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/06/2009
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d)

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 an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

It's Sunday Morning in Early November

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Failure"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Philip Schultz.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents
It’s Sunday Morning in Early November 1
Talking to Ourselves 2
Specimen 3
The Summer People 5
The Magic Kingdom 7
Louse Point 9
The Idea of California 11
Kodak Park Athletic Association, 1954 14
Grief 15
The Absent 16
My Dog 17
The Garden 18
Exquisite with Agony 19
Bronze Crowd:
After Magdalena Abakanowicz 21
Why 23
My Wife 25
Husband 27
Uncle Sigmund 28
The Amount of Us 30
What I Like and Don’t Like 31
Blunt 32
Shellac 34
The Adventures of 78 Charles Street 36
Isaac Babel Visits My Dreams 39
Dance Performance 41
The Traffic 43
The Truth 45
The One Truth 46
Failure 48
The Wandering Wingless 50
Acknowledgments 105

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

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

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher