Poet at a loss for words

My Dyslexia by Philip Schultz


Philip Schultz is telling me what it's like to be one of the students I tutor. He was a terrible student, often in trouble in school. He couldn't read until he was in fifth grade.  No one thought he'd end up a poet -- let alone a Pulitzer Prize winner. He'd been led to think of his predicament as a mix of stupidity and cussedness, with a tinge of insanity.  I've always been the opposite -- what my mom called a "bookworm." I naturally turned to writing and then teaching. Reading teachers are often people like me --  and we can't get inside the skin of people like Schultz. But he found the name for his predicament -- dyslexia -- not long ago. When he decided to start this book he got depressed. Dyslexia had woven itself into his life in deep and painful ways. Reading still gives him pain. But words give him pleasure. I am glad he finally wrote about how this can be.


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