The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems

by Philip Schultz

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 “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.

Genres: Poetry

194 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Philip Schultz is the author of seven collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Failure. He is the founder and director of the Writers Studio and lives in East Hampton, New York.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps too much happens
& the loss is finally for something that never existed?
Returning may be a step forward, but now the question

is how much we can bear to question. Change, I think,
happens almost always too late.
[…]
I remember
what was promised. That once I believed I could die of love.
That, like fate & youth & weather, it continued forever.

This is the first day of the new year & around me everywhere
the light is less convincing. I mean to say the view this morning
from every direction is still lovely, if a little darker.

[SouthWestZippy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to like this book, most of it was over my head (could not understand) and other parts are very depressing and political feeling.
I just don't care for this form of poem writing; it feels more like very short stories.

[Cooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving and profound poetry

By the end of this book, Schultz is almost always writing wholly successful poems. His individual voice is recognizably the same as in the early poems, yet stronger, wiser, and more profound. He is undoubtedly a major poet.

[Violetta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vicious and heartbreaking, tinged in melancholic outbreaks of exultation.

[REGINA VITOLO · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not alone anymore ...

After spending these last days of June reading the words poet Schultz has written, voicing the angst of Jews who sat through the war years, the DPs locked in the prisons of shattered minds, the moving tributes to literary and philosophical geniuses admired and missed, and I am grateful that I can read, that I finished college and graduate school and feel deep sorrow for the trump voters who despise education and the written word. If we have sunk so far, will America recover?
Such a marvelous selection of poetry. Another poet I admire is Sharon Olds who rests on my bookshelves. Other people travel, I journey by poetry and language. Thank you dear poets.

[Karima]

This is not the type of book one ever "finishes" as would be true for most collections of poetry. Picked up this book because I recently heard the poem 'The God of Loneliness' read and wanted more. It explores the American immigrant experience and Jewish identity. The Pulitzer winner for poetry in 2008. Well deserved.
Here's the poem:

The God of Loneliness
by Philip Schultz

It’s a cold Sunday February morning

and I’m one of eight men waiting

for the doors of Toys R Us to open

in a mall on the eastern tip of Long Island.

We’ve come for the Japanese electronic game

that’s so hard to find. Last week, I waited

three hours for a store in Manhattan

to disappoint me. The first today, bundled

in six layers, I stood shivering in the dawn light

reading the new Aeneid translation, which I hid

when the others came, stamping boots

and rubbing gloveless hands, joking about

sacrificing sleep for ungrateful sons. “My boy broke

two front teeth playing hockey,” a man wearing

shorts laughs. “This is his reward.” My sons

will leap into my arms, remember this morning

all their lives. “The game is for my oldest boy,

just back from Iraq,” a man in overalls says

from the back of the line. “He plays these games

in his room all day. I’m not worried, he’ll snap out of it,

he’s earned his rest.” These men fix leaks, lay

foundations for other men’s dreams without complaint.

They’ve been waiting in the cold since Aeneas

founded Rome on rivers of blood. Virgil understood that

death begins and never ends, that it’s the god of loneliness.

Through the window, a clerk shouts, “We’ve only five.”

The others seem not to know what to do with their hands,

tuck them under their arms, or let them hang,

naked and useless. Is it because our hands remember

what they held, the promises they made? I know

exactly when my boys will be old enough for war.

Soon three of us will wait across the street at Target,

because it’s what men do for their sons.

[Shannon T.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

there were some really great poems in this book and some i didn't care for as much, but none of them were awful which is nice.