In the Blood: Poems

A new edition of the first book of poems from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips, with a new afterword.

I am no mystic. I know
nothing rises that doesn’t
know how to already.
In my ears, only the clubbed
foot of routine, no voices, no

clatter of dreams: but I saw
what I saw

Even in his first book of poems, the deep contradictions in Carl Phillips’s work are already pronounced. Here is a subtle poet, attuned to the simple honesty of everyday speech, and yet steeped in classical allusion. L...