Customer Reviews

In The Blood (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize)

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I have read and admired poems by Carl Phillips for years but had never read one of his collections. With his third book about to be released from Graywolf, I decided to go back and read his first and second. To understand my impulse, one must realize that I consider one of Phillips' poems, "As from a Quiver of Arrows," (which originally appeared in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY and was lately reprinted in THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1996) to be among the very best poems I have seen published in a magazine in the past decade. Despite my high expectations of the poet, this collection, his first, is absolutely amazing. Unlike many first books that hold the voices of many masters in its poems-the poet trying on "different skins"-Carl Phillips' collection holds a distinctive new voice. There is no W.H. Auden, no Elizabeth Bishop, no Wallace Stevens or W.C. Williams. There is Carl Phillips, his exacting poems that never miss a step. There is a security here, a poet confident in his abilities, the skill of one who has been doing this for years. Phillips' poems seem more like poems written by our contemporary masters than by a young poet! The obsessions I associate with his work are there: the body, a love of detail, the physical world that at any moment can be transformed, the mind fleeting from place to place with an awe-inspiring agility. Along with the book EMPTY SLEEVES by Sidney Wade, I count this collection as one of the best first book published in the last 10 years. No reader of poetry should miss this book. IN THE BLOOD was selected by Rachel Hadas as the winner of the 1992 Samuel French Morse Prize and published by Northeastern University Press. Carl Phillips is also the author of CORTÉGE and the soon to be released FROM THE DEVOTIONS, both from Graywolf Press.// C. Dale Young, Associate Editor of NEW ENGLAND REVIEW