Synopses & Reviews
The light, for as far asI can see, is that of any number of late
afternoons I remember still: how the light
seemed a bell; how it seemed I'd been living
insider it, waiting - I'd heard all about
that one clear note it gives.
--from "Late Apollo III"
In The Rest of Love, his seventh book, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe: Aren't we always trying, Phillips asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly,the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control; following his impeccable interior logic, "passionately austere" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post Book World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire--physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Carl Phillips is the author of several books of poems, including Rock Harbor, The Tether, Pastoral, and From the Devotions, the last of which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the recipient of a 2001 Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
A Finalist for the National Book Award
In his seventh book of verse, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe. Aren't we always trying, the poet asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly, the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control.
Indeed, the poems in The Rest of Love also plumb this very tension. Following his impeccable interior logic, always "passionately austere" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post Book World), Phillips explores the myths that we both create and return to in the name of desirephysical, emotional, and spiritual.
A Finalist for the National Book Award
"[This latest book of poems by Phillips] will not only please fans, but will send new readers back to recent books."Publishers Weekly
"[Phillips achieves] a delicately cadenced music entirely his own."Roger Gilbert, Michigan Quarterly Review
"Phillips's line is elegant . . . [This is] a collection of carefully crafted poems."Ira Sher, Poetry Magazine
"In The Rest of Love, Carl Phillips offers 33 lyrics that intricately explore the paradox implicit in his book's title: that love and desire reside in the constant tension between excess and repose, release and restraint. Phillips plumbs this tension with a supple lyric idiom. He often writes in tercets that spill, like a stepped waterfall, one into the other, a flow channelled in each tercet by brief lines laden with interrogatives and apostrophes and punctuated by commas and dashes. This baroque syntax coaxes to life images that pucker, bloom, and sprawl . . . The Rest of Love is the scintillating record of a poet struggling to understand desire and to find a pattern of understanding within the struggle itself."John Palatella, Newsday
"Furthering an idiom worked up over six previous books and showing no signs of exhaustion, Phillips delivers another brittle, electric set of poems on love, sex, masculinity, and their classical contours. In 33 lyrics divided over three sections, Phillips's unmistakable, short-lined apostrophes, riddled with exhalative em-dashes and pulled-up-short interrogatives, perform the kind of personal control that, before [his book called] The Tether, would have been a main component of domination, but has slowly modulated into conscious attempts at sharing one's physical and psychic lives fullyor as fully as possible: 'to what extent can this be said, and / it be true? and / it be false? / Under what conditions? // Under whose conditions?' Phillips finds a series of images, from 'White Dog' ('First snow97I release her into it') to a donkey in Santiago ('He shot the ass / in the head. Simple.') to 'the boy at the bow' of a sculling crew ('the rest of the boys / sang back'), and works each singly and satisfyingly. And as with Phillips's other recent work, while the poems do not form a series, they seem to provide multiple and overlapping accounts of the title's excess (or its repose) without trying to define it. The result will not only please fans, but will send new readers back to recent books."Publishers Weekly
"It's appropriate that this book is being published in deep midwinter, for it is pervaded by the sense of loss and melancholy often associated with that season. 'And you a stone / marked Gone Alreadyyou / a leaf, / marked Spattered Milk,' observes the narrator of one poem as he leans against a window's 'old' glass and watches an approaching storm. Phillips, whose most recent book, The Tether, won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, is known for evanescent lines that practically float off the page like smoke. Here, he's a little less elliptical than in The Tethersome poems, like 'Hymns and Fragments,' are almost narrativebut the musing tone remains. As always, Phillips's poems breathe quietude, but despite the wintry tone he seems ready for a reckoning, facing up to a traitorous world ('Any force / generosity, sudden updraft. Fear') and wrestling politely with God ('I wagered on God in a kind stranger'). The results are polished and penetrating."Library Journal
Review
"Furthering an idiom worked up over six previous books and showing no signs of exhaustion, Phillips delivers another brittle, electric set of poems on love, sex, masculinity and their classical contours....The result will not only please fans, but will send new readers back to recent books." Publishers Weekly
Review
"As always, Phillips's poems breathe quietude, but despite the wintry tone he seems ready for a reckoning, facing up to a traitorous world...and wrestling politely with God....The results are polished and penetrating." Library Journal
Review
"Like Donne, Phillips mixes the divine with the beloved and, in accordance with his interest in control, throws in a suggestion of S-and-M to boot." The New York Times
Synopsis
In The Rest of Love, his seventh book, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe: Aren't we always trying, Phillips asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly, the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control; following his impeccable interior logic, "passionately austere" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post Book World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire physical, emotional and spiritual.
Synopsis
The light, for as far as
I can see, is that of any number of late
afternoons I remember still: how the light
seemed a bell; how it seemed I'd been living
insider it, waiting I'd heard all about
that one clear note it gives.
from "Late Apollo III"
In The Rest of Love, his seventh book, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe: Aren't we always trying, Phillips asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly, the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control; following his impeccable interior logic, "passionately austere" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post Book World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Synopsis
Striking new poems from a writer whose "lyric gift . . . outstrips all diversionary maneuvers." (Carol Moldaw, The Antioch Review)The light, for as far as
I can see, is that of any number of late
afternoons I remember still: how the light
seemed a bell; how it seemed I'd been living
insider it, waiting - I'd heard all about
that one clear note it gives.
--from "Late Apollo III"
In The Rest of Love, his seventh book, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe: Aren't we always trying, Phillips asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly, the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control; following his impeccable interior logic, "passionately austere" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post Book World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire-physical, emotional, and spiritual. The Rest of Love is a 2004 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.
About the Author
Carl Phillips is the author of six previous books of poems, including
Rock Harbor and
The Tether, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. The recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, he teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.