'This selected offers admirers of Phillips’s work a chance to revisit his masterful poems, and new readers an opportunity to see the evolution of a vital presence in American poetry. The poems that open Then the War are extraordinary ecological lyric verse, subtle and transformative.' -Fiona Sampson, The Guardian ''Glowing confirmation that, as he enters his 60s, Phillips is writing better than ever. An important milestone in the still flourishing career of a most brilliant poet.' - Booklist Every selection provides a portal to this accomplished author's work. 'A master class in deceptively gentle voice and striking depictions of raw humanity. Often, their power lies in their unfolding.' -Richie Hofmann, Los Angeles Review of Books

In a moment obsessed with snappy performances, Phillips’s poems are contemplative, rich, and troubled. I couldn’t mistake these poems for any other poet’s work. 'Carl Phillips is a poet of enchantment and persuasion. an exquisite collection.' -Ron Charles, The Washington Post

'The poet Carl Phillips combines beauty and insight in syntactically surprising lines that always reward careful study.

Then the War is luminous testimony to the power of self-reckoning and to Carl Phillips as an ever-changing, necessary voice in contemporary poetry. Ultimately, Phillips refuses pessimism, arguing for tenderness and human connection as profound forces for revolution and conjuring a spell against indifference and the easy escapes of nostalgia. Then the War includes a generous selection of Phillips’s work from the previous thirteen years, as well as his recent lyric prose memoir, “Among the Trees,” and his chapbook, Star Map with Action Figures. The new poems, written in a time of rising racial conflict in the United States, with its attendant violence and uncertainty, find Phillips entering deeper into the landscape he has made his own: a forest of intimacy, queerness, and moral inquiry, where the farther we go, the more difficult it is to remember why or where we started. A new collection of poems from one of America’s most essential, celebrated, and enduring poets, Carl Phillips's Then the WarĬarl Phillips has aptly described his work as an “ongoing quest” Then the War is the next step in that meaningful process of self-discovery for both the poet and his reader.

Then the war carl phillips