My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing

An invaluable companion for writers at every stage of their journey to make the writing life a more complex and cooperative venture

In this intimate and eloquent meditation, the award-winning poet Carl Phillips shares lessons he has learned about what he calls an “apprenticeship to what can never fully be mastered,” through forty years of teaching and mentoring emerging writers. He weaves together his experiences as a poet and prose writer with discussions of underexplored elements of the w...