Synopses & Reviews
Quiver of Arrows is a generous gathering from Carl Phillipss work that showcases the twenty-year evolution of one of Americas most distinctiveand one of poetrys most essentialcontemporary voices. Hailed from the beginning of his career for a poetry provocative in its candor, uncompromising in its inquiry, and at once rigorous and innovative in its attention to craft, Phillips has in the course of eight critically acclaimed collections generated a sustained meditation on the restless and ever-shifting myth of human identity. Desire and loss, mastery and subjugation, belief and doubt, sex, animal instinct, human reason: these are among the lenses through which Phillips examines what it means to be that most bewildering, irresolvable conundrum, a human being in the world. Phillipss sensibility as he questions morality, psychology, and our notions of responsibility is as startlingly original as the poems themselves, whose exacting standards for the lines flexibility and whose argument for a versatile, more muscular syntax bring to American poetry something not unlike a new musical scale” (
The Miami Herald).
Quiver of Arrows is the record of a powerful vision that, in its illumination of the human condition, has established itself as a necessary step toward our understanding of who we are in the twenty-first century.
Carl Phillips is the author of nine previous books of poems, including Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006; Riding Westward; and The Rest of Love, a National Book Award finalist. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. Quiver of Arrows is a generous gathering from Carl Phillipss work that showcases the twenty-year evolution of one of Americas most distinctiveand one of poetrys most essentialcontemporary voices. Hailed from the beginning of his career for a poetry provocative in its candor, uncompromising in its inquiry, and at once rigorous and innovative in its attention to craft, Phillips has in the course of eight critically acclaimed collections generated a sustained meditation on the restless and ever-shifting myth of human identity. Desire and loss, mastery and subjugation, belief and doubt, sex, animal instinct, human reason: these are among the lenses through which Phillips examines what it means to be that most bewildering, irresolvable conundrum, a human being in the world. Phillipss sensibility as he questions morality, psychology, and our notions of responsibility is as startlingly original as the poems themselves, whose exacting standards for the lines flexibility and whose argument for a versatile, more muscular syntax bring to American poetry something not unlike a new musical scale” (The Miami Herald). Quiver of Arrows is the record of a powerful vision that, in its illumination of the human condition, has established itself as a necessary step toward our understanding of who we are in the twenty-first century. "Phillips is a scholar and translator of classical Greek and a writer of syntactically complex, desire-drenched love poems that subtly, and beautifully, reinvent classical tropes and forms. Phillips has published eight books of his own poetry: this selection pares down a rapidly expanding oeuvre to its sharp essentials."Publishers Weekly "Quiver of Arrows gathers work from Carl Phillips's twenty-year career and showcases his idiosyncratic voice and distinctive style. Phillips, winner of the 2006 Academy Fellowship and a newly elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, has published eight collections of poetry, all to critical acclaim. This book gives a generous sampling of the work that has made him a major poet who seems only to get better with age . . . Phillips is a poet of questioning, searching for right words, breaking mid-thought to revise, all to approach some understanding of what it means to be a human being."American Poet
"Phillips is a scholar and translator of classical Greek and a writer of syntactically complex, desire-drenched love poems that subtly, and beautifully, reinvent classical tropes and forms. Phillips has published eight books of his own poetry: this selection pares down a rapidly expanding oeuvre to its sharp essentials. Phillips's first three books . . . show him working out his relation to the traditionfrom the Famous Black Poet to Yeats (I recognized/ something more/ than swan to Sappho (My tongue still remembers)and to AIDS and its aftermath: I watched as each boat fell to flame:/ Vincent and Matthew and, last, what bore your name. Pastoral (2000) finds Phillips confidently making the tercet into a representation of the lover's body, a practice that has culminated in four subsequent books rapidly published in the '00sincluding The Tether and The Rest of Lovethat contain extraordinary and strange examples of Phillips's trademark writing about the bonds and bounds of sex and couplehood: Singing inside the mirror,/ to no one, to// itself, the body folding, and/ unfolding, as if map/ then shroud, its song."Publishers Weekly
Review
Praise for Carl Phillips: "Singing the music of mythology, history and philosophy, [Phillips's] poems are delicately crafted to sound like common speech even though there is nothing pedestrian about them. Because of their dexterity, they are approachable without sacrificing their loftier aspirations." --Dionisio Martinez,
The Miami Herald Praise for
Riding Westward: "The poems in
Riding Westward ring like peals of a bell--recognizable, separate and yet merging together, radiating from a single source . . . Again Phillips strikes the theme of radiating realities, this time working inward from the largest darkness of all, which is implied, to the darkness of night, to the smaller darkness of one person's remembered life. The cowboy's song--as all the poems in
Riding Westward--is a comforting lament." -Aaron Belz,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"This is a tidal collection with poems that are wavelike in their formation, breaking and falling abruptly or gently rinsing the shore, all in a dance of creation and erasure . . . Riding Westward offers an expansion of mind that can only be compared to riding out into the boundary-less field of vision our Western plains offer." -Janet St. John, Booklist
Synopsis
Quiver of Arrows is a generous gathering from Carl Phillips's work that showcases the twenty-year evolution of one of America's most distinctive--and one of poetry's most essential--contemporary voices. Hailed from the beginning of his career for a poetry provocative in its candor, uncompromising in its inquiry, and at once rigorous and innovative in its attention to craft, Phillips has in the course of eight critically acclaimed collections generated a sustained meditation on the restless and ever-shifting myth of human identity. Desire and loss, mastery and subjugation, belief and doubt, sex, animal instinct, human reason: these are among the lenses through which Phillips examines what it means to be that most bewildering, irresolvable conundrum, a human being in the world. Phillips's sensibility as he questions morality, psychology, and our notions of responsibility is as startlingly original as the poems themselves, whose exacting standards for the line's flexibility and whose argument for a versatile, more muscular syntax bring to American poetry "something not unlike a new musical scale" (The Miami Herald). Quiver of Arrows is the record of a powerful vision that, in its illumination of the human condition, has established itself as a necessary step toward our understanding of who we are in the twenty-first century.
About the Author
Carl Phillips is the author of eight previous books of poems, including The Rest of Love, a National Book Award finalist; Rock Harbor; and The Tether, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.