From the Devotions: Poems

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.

"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

Carl Phillips is the author of In the Blood, which won the Morse Poetry Prize, and Cortège, a Finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Lambda Literary Award. The recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets, Phillips is associate professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University, St. Louis, where he also directs the creative writing program.

Library Journal

Phillips's (In the Blood, 10/15/92) aptly titled third collection presents a lyrical, sensitive meditation on love, loss, and the fragile balance between the two: "Sometimes,/ we hold onto a life tightly./ Foolish, sad./ Not to know that it has already left us," as he says in the opening poem. Note that he speaks of "a" life, not merely "life"; he constantly reaches for universal "truths," then rotates them slightly in blinding light until they crystallize into personal reflections. AIDS, never mentioned, seems to well up beneath the surface as he memorializes friends and the lovers of friends. Spiritual without naming gods, he makes biblical references that provide a distancing, as do his "renderings" from classic Greek texts. But if some poems in this volume feel more detached than his previous work, the quivering emotions in other poems more than tip the scales. Highly recommended.Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York

Carl Phillips is the author of In the Blood, which won the Morse Poetry Prize, and Cortège, a Finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Lambda Literary Award. The recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets, Phillips is associate professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University, St. Louis, where he also directs the creative writing program.