Publishers Weekly
★ 11/15/2021
Combining new and old poems from the last 13 years with sections of his lyric prose memoir, "Among the Trees," this selected offers admirers of Phillips's work a chance to revisit his masterful poems, and new readers an opportunity to see the evolution of a vital presence in American poetry. There is a deceptive looseness in Phillips's poems, which are conversational and intimate, heightening the poet's abiding concern with nuance. He begins "The Difficulty": "It's as if the difficulty were less about what happened—/ the truth presumably—than how little/ what happened resembles the story/ of what happened." Often, he lays two ideas side by side as a way of exploring how beings (fathers, lovers, dogs, to name a few) affect one another: "what isn't love—at all—/ can begin to feel like love" ("Of California"); "as if to be plundered meant at least not being alone" ("Among the Trees"). These lyrically rich, insightful poems are full of palpable aching—"like the rhyme between lost/ and most"—and a human urge to understand. This remarkable compendium is a testament to the spirit of Phillips's work. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
"The poet Carl Phillips combines beauty and insight in syntactically surprising lines that always reward careful study . . . an exquisite collection." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Carl Phillips is a poet of enchantment and persuasion . . . I couldn’t mistake these poems for any other poet’s work. In a moment obsessed with snappy performances, Phillips’s poems are contemplative, rich, and troubled. They are rarely axiomatic or quotable. Often, their power lies in their unfolding." —Richie Hofmann, Los Angeles Review of Books
"A master class in [Phillips's] deceptively gentle voice and striking depictions of raw humanity . . . Every selection provides a portal to this accomplished author's work. An important milestone in the still flourishing career of a most brilliant poet." —Booklist
""Glowing confirmation that, as he enters his 60s, Phillips is writing better than ever. The poems that open Then the War are extraordinary ecological lyric verse, subtle and transformative." —Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
"This selected offers admirers of Phillips’s work a chance to revisit his masterful poems, and new readers an opportunity to see the evolution of a vital presence in American poetry . . . These lyrically rich, insightful poems are full of palpable aching—’like the rhyme between lost/ and most’—and a human urge to understand. This remarkable compendium is a testament to the spirit of Phillips’s work.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“With the incomparably gorgeous, deftly poetic sentences that make up his work, Carl Phillips has been exploring intimacy, sexuality, and interiority for more than a decade.” —Corinne Segal, Literary Hub
