25590
Author: Carl Phillips
File Type: epub
Speak Low is the tenth book from one of Americas most distinctiveand one of poetrys most essentialcontemporary voices. Phillips has long been hailed for work provocative in its candor, uncompromising in its inquiry, and at once rigorous and innovative in its attention to craft. Over the course of nine critically acclaimed collections, he has 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. These new poems are of a piece with Phillipss previous work in their characteristic clarity and originality of thought, in their unsparing approach to morality and psychology, and in both the strength and startling flexibility of their line. Speak Low 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.Speak Low is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.**From Publishers WeeklyThis 10th book from the prolific Phillips (Quiver of Arrows) is a quiet yet wounded reflection on Phillips signature subjects relationships, distances, identity, and damage. Phillips remarkable ability to be clear yet illusive, as well as his dizzying syntax, are ever- present as the poems coil into places of confusion Oh, sometimes it is as if desire had been given form, and acreage, and Id been left for lost there. Amazement grips me, I grip it back. Rendering visceral moments with surprising leisure, like blood with a drawl to it, Phillips searches slowly but relentlessly for answers to unanswerable questions whos to say what will not be useful? Critics who find Phillips poems overwrought at times are unlikely to change their minds now, but for his many fans, this collection is more evidence that Phillips is making good on his offer to show you what it looks like when surrender, and an instinct not to, run side by side. (Apr.) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. ReviewThis 10th book from the prolific Phillips is a quiet yet wounded reflection on Phillips signature subjects relationships, distances, identity, and damage. Phillips remarkable ability to be clear yet illusive, as well as his dizzying syntax, are ever- present as the poems coil into places of confusion Oh, sometimes it is as if desire had been given form, and acreage, and Id been left for lost there. Amazement grips me, I grip it back. Rendering visceral moments with surprising leisure, like blood with a drawl to it, Phillips searches slowly but relentlessly for answers to unanswerable questions whos to say what will not be useful? . . . this collection is more evidence that Phillips is making good on his offer to show you what it looks like when surrender, and an instinct not to, run side by side.**Publishers WeeklyTheme and style join perfectly in Speak Low . . .In poem after poem, the speaker turns to address questions of power. The style of the poems, as they frame and shape these questions, feels at once pliant and masterful . . . As in Rilke, Phillips lines give his language a near-sculptural form, something like a fountain. The poems are structures of alternating firmness and give, as the sense spills from line to line.Jenny Mueller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Singing the music of mythology, history and philosophy,[Phillipss] 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
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Created
1 year ago
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application/epub+zip
English