from “Shellac”
My first day in New York City
I found a sweet pad on Jane Street.
It was spring, everyone was hurrying
somewhere tremendous, bursting
with the most eclectic appetites.
In all those buildings all those windows
hosting the most magical schemes…
that’s why it was impossible to sleep.
Prize winner, 2008
Founder and director of the Writers Studio in New York, Philip Schultz grew up in Rochester, New York. He earned a BA from San Francisco State University and an MA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, among them Like Wings (1978), winner of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in literature; Deep Within the Ravine (1984), awarded the Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize; The Holy Worm of Praise (2002); Living in the Past (2004); the Pulitzer Prize–winning Failure (2007); and The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems (2010).
Excerpted from poetryfoundation.org