Assuming the I in the short poems here is Schultzit obviously isnt in the 50-pager that so impressively concludes the bookthen he seems to have started a family when well past 50, which is rather startling, given the books title and predominant woundedness. To have two small boys turn up regularly amid all the memorials, hauntings, bittersweet and just plain bitter recollections, and resigned complaints about society, human inadequacy, and chance is disconcerting, refreshing, and poignant (are they bound for the same kinds of disappointment? of course). If personal failure is the main theme here, it is finally no reason to be defeated. Although incurably depressive, you can still walk dogs in Manhattan and love them, even after 9/11, which caused you to be rushed out of recovery from electroshock therapy that day, as happened to the narrator of the big poem, The Wandering Wingless. Life goes on for Schultz, and he continues to write about it with greater conversational sweetness than any other American poet one can readily call to mind.

Winner Pullitzer Prize 2008