Poet Philip Schultz discusses his dyslexia

A dyslexic poet winning a Pulitzer Prize may sound like the beginning of a bad academic joke, but this is just what happened in 2008 to Philip Schultz, East Hampton-based poet and author of the moving new memoir "My Dyslexia" (W.W. Norton & Co., $21.95). After a traumatic boyhood spent flunking school and picking fights, followed by an anxious adulthood struggling to put words on the page, Schultz's dyslexia was finally discovered at age 58, when his own son was diagnosed in second grade. In a recent telephone call, Schultz discussed the lasting effects of the Dummy Class and his theory of Einstein's creativity.

You are dyslexic, yet your world revolves around words. How does that work?

As a poet and a teacher, I read all the time. I know I read slowly. I like reading, but I don't read any more than I have to. I have to really get my mind in a place where I can overcome the anxiety of asking my brain to read written language. The anxiety is profound and always there. I write slowly, and I write many, many drafts. I probably have to work as hard as anyone, and maybe harder, to finish a poem. I often write a poem over years, because it takes me a long time to figure out what to say and how best to say it. Reading, like writing, is a process of excavation.

How has dyslexia altered your life?

Letter scrambling and trouble reading is just a small part of dyslexia. It is also an auditory processing problem. I know I have to ask my doctor to repeat directions three times, or I won't hear him. When speaking to my class, sometimes I can't find the word, or I can find the word but I can't remember how to pronounce it. I avoid recipes and maps. As a student, I would never try to take notes in class. I would avoid going to class altogether!

You felt given up on as a child in school. How will your son's life differ from yours now that he has help for his disability?

When you're young, your view of yourself is influenced by others -- if they give up on you, you give up on yourself. You see yourself as unworthy, and that sticks with you. My son likes himself. He's known for quite a while that he's dyslexic, and he knows he is smart. That's the opposite of my childhood. I was put in the Dummy Class for a couple of years. I saw myself as a dummy, and part of me always will.

Yet you also describe dyslexia as something that gives you and your son a creative edge.

Einstein was dyslexic, and so was Yeats. Dyslexia lends itself to original thinking, not rote formulas, because you can't do the formulas -- you think up your own method based on intuition and instincts. Creativity is trial and error, trying to figure out a way to do something emotionally and intuitively. If Einstein had tried to fit into some kind of uniform way of thinking, he never would have come up with his theories.