The Poet and His Dyslexia

Rochester native Philip Schultz has overcome his dyslexia and has become a successful writer and poet.

Philip Schultz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his book about his father, Failure. Ironically, that book, published when Schultz was 63, brought him a measure of success and fame that had eluded him throughout decades of writing verse, including five previous volumes of poetry. His new collection of poems, The God of Loneliness, brings together poems written across the span of those decades, from 1978 through 2009. The Poet and His Dyslexia airs Sunday, January 16 at 10 p.m. on AM 1370. It repeats on Tuesday, January 18 at 9 p.m.

Schultz’s themes center around family, especially the immigrant Jewish family he grew up in Rochester, New York. His larger than life father — who held the record in New York for the most failed businesses, Schultz claims — is a major inspiration. But so are his grandmother with her acerbic pronouncements on life, his Uncle Jake, who dreamed big while running the projector at a local movie theater, and, perhaps his best-loved character, his guardian angel Stein.