Philip Schultz Wins Pulitzer Prize
The East Hampton poet’s book ‘Failure’ turns out to be a resounding success
 Eleanor Kedney |
(4/10/2008) Philip Schultz was walking Penelope in the Springs dog park on Monday when his younger son, Augie, suddenly rounded a corner along with his mother.
“My heart stopped,” Mr. Schultz said, sleepless, on Tuesday. “It was either very bad news or very good news.”
Augie said, “Did you know Junot Diaz just won the Pulitzer Prize?”
“He had just read for us at a book party for Edward Hirsch, the poet,” explained Mr. Schultz, the founder of the Writers Studio in New York City. Mr. Diaz won this year’s fiction Pulitzer for his first novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”
“And guess who won it for poetry?” Augie asked his dad.
“I couldn’t think of anyone,” Mr. Schultz said.
“Failure,” his fifth collection of poems, which came out in November, has turned out to be a resounding success. The East Hampton poet said that an editor at The New Yorker suggested “Reverse Psychology” as the title for his next book.
“Obviously, they had rehearsed this,” Mr. Schultz said of the way his wife and son broke the news.
While he was walking the dog, Monica Banks, Mr. Schultz’s wife, was online at home. She read first about The Washington Post’s sweep of Pulitzers, then about Mr. Diaz’s award, then realized that her husband had won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Another one went to Robert Hass, for “Time and Materials,” which also won the National Book Award. Mr. Hass is a former United States poet laureate.
“He’s a wonderful poet,” said Mr. Schultz, who himself was once nominated for a National Book Award. “I would have guessed that he would have won. I never would have guessed that I would have won.”
“Monica,” who is a sculptor, “told me she always thought that I would get one,” Mr. Schultz said. She once said to him, when she was introducing him to another artist and Mr. Schultz was rather rattily attired, “Well, if you dress like that, you’d better get a Pulitzer.”
Ms. Banks and Mr. Schultz met at a dog run, in fact, and the speaker in a long poem that constitutes the second half of “Failure” walks dogs for a living. A photo of Mr. Schultz with one of their dogs, taken by Ms. Banks, appears on the jacket.
“Failure” is Mr. Schultz’s first book of poetry to earn back his advance, he said, sounding a little incredulous that it did. The title refers to his father, who died penniless at age 60, leaving Mr. Schultz and his mother unable to even pay for his funeral.
The subject, which he had been avoiding, resonates with readers.
“I was finally facing down the darkest time in my life,” Mr. Schultz said of his father’s death and bankruptcy. While having lunch with a friend he learned that the friend “had a similar story.”
“I was so moved . . . it’s just stunning to talk to someone who’s had a similar experience. . . . This whole poem came to me — ‘The One Truth,’ about my father, sort of dark and angry.”
“I came out of it realizing that the subject of my life was failure,” Mr. Schultz said. “I went back and looked at my poetry, and it was always there, always background material, and I never could confront it.”
After the book was finished, Mr. Schultz asked a radio host, who rarely chose poets to interview, why he had picked “Failure” and asked Mr. Schultz to read the title poem.
“I could tell he was making sounds, sniffling sounds,” Mr. Schultz said, “and he said he had the same experience: He was 18 when his father died and they had to move into a hotel room that a friend paid for.”
“Monica,” Mr. Schultz said, “thinks everyone feels like a failure, except for the ones who really are.”
“The long poem tries to deal with 9/11 and tries to understand it,” he said. “Personal failure can explain historical failure; 9/11 was a lot of personal failures and misunderstandings. The dog walker has a father who failed — that put everything in perspective.”
Many poems in the book are bluntly “dark and angry,” but others rejoice in marriage, parenthood, and dog ownership, not to mention the beaches and people in East Hampton. They are joys that were never expected, and several poems talk about how vulnerable it feels to have so much to lose.
“You never expect something like this,” Mr. Schultz said Tuesday morning after a flurry of interviews and congratulations from as far as London and France.
He had not yet heard from the Pulitzer board, he said. “I could get a call that says they were just kidding.”
But when a friend, Carl Dennis, won a Pulitzer several years ago, “he heard about it from a friend,” Mr. Schultz pointed out.
“I guess there’s a ceremony.” There’s also a $10,000 prize, “which may translate to a college fund for Eli,” Mr. Schultz’s older son.
“So, Penelope will have some chewy toys for a while,” he added.