With From the Devotions, Carl Phillips takes us even further into that dangerous space he has already made his own, where body and soul--ever restless--come explosively together. Speaking to a balance between decorum and pain, he offers here a devotional poetry that argues for faith, even without the comforting gods or the organized structures of revealed truth. Neither sage nor saint nor prophet, the poet is the listener, the mourner, the one who has some access to the maddening quarters of human consciousness, the wry Sibyl. From the Devotions is deeply felt, highly intelligent, and unsentimental, and cements Phillips's reputation as a poet of enormous talent and depth.
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Phillips's reputation has been growing, and this third collection confirms him as one of the best poets writing in America today. In quintessentially lyric verse, he investigates love in all its ramifications, both physical and spiritual, and the devastating consequences of its loss. "He constantly reaches for universal `truths,' then rotates them slightly in blinding light until they crystallize into personal reflections," observed LJ's reviewer. The result is intense communion between poet and reader that remains long after the book is closed.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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"In his extraordinary new book of poems, From the Devotions, by far his best, Carl Phillips has done what few of his contemporaries have dared or managed with as much elegant authority. He has plotted here the romantic landscape of desire. Myths are unsheathed and glisten. History is held and pondered. Violence shimmers, desires are silhouetted against the light of love and death. His tone is at once erotic and mystical, hushed and compelling. This book is a blessing, a ravishing, a haunting. I urge you to read it--to succumb to it."--J.D. McClatchy
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Carl Phillips is the author of 9 previous books of poems, including Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006; Riding Westward; and The Rest of Love, a National Book Award Finalist. His most recent collection, Speak Low, is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
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This review is from: From the Devotions: Poems (Paperback)
As I began to read these poems, I found the author's extensive use of parenthetical phrases to be an irritating device that made the meaning of the poem elusive. However, the same jarring use of syntax (words rather than phrases) is a significant reason that the poem The Sibyl works very well. His renderings (translations from Greek) are splendid poetry. In short, in this volume I found a range from poems I found unneccesarily opaque to absolute gems, everything from meditations on what it means to be gay and moral to studies of Greek gods. This is a book that each reader must decide for themselves if this is a book for them - some will love it, others will not - and both will be fair accessments.
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