My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing [Paperback]

An invaluable companion for any writer seeking to make the writing life a more complex and cooperative venture

“Illuminating, deeply endearing essays.”—Ron Charles,Washington Post
 
“A lovely, loving letter to aspiring writers.”—Diego Báez,Booklist
 
In these intimate and eloquent meditations, the award-winning poet Carl Phillips shares lessons he has learned about the writing life, an “apprenticeship to what can never fully be mastered.” Drawing on forty years of teaching and mentoring emerging writers, he weaves his experiences as a poet with the necessary survival skills, including ambition, stamina, silence, politics, practice, audience, and community.
 
In the tradition of Anne Lamott’sBird by Bird, Rainer Maria Rilke’sLetters to a Young Poet, and Marcus Aurelius’sMeditations, this is an invaluable companion for writers at every stage of their journey. Phillips’s book serves as a partner in speculation and an invitation to embrace mystery.An invaluable companion for any writer seeking to make the writing life a more complex and cooperative venture“Revelatory [and] sometimes contrarian. . . . I’ve admired [Phillips’s] poetry for years, but reading this Pulitzer winner operating in another genre amplified, for me, the subtlety, brilliance, and humility of his work.”—Andrew LaVallee,New York Times

“A small collection of illuminating, deeply endearing essays about the writing life.”—Ron Charles,Washington Post

“Slender and rewarding, this essay collection finds the American poet embracing the mysteries of his craft, rather than striving to explain them away.”—Hephzibah Anderson,The Observer

“A beautiful collection of essays. . . . Phillips’s reflections are as mlƒ™