The Rest of Love Poems [Paperback]

Striking new poems from a writer whose lyric gift . . . outstrips all diversionary maneuvers. (Carol Moldaw,The Antioch Review)

The light, for as far as
I can see, is that of any number of late

afternoons I remember still: how the light
seemed a bell; how it seemed I'd been living
insider it, waiting - I'd heard all about

that one clear note it gives.
--from Late Apollo III

InThe Rest of Love, his seventh book, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe: Aren't we always trying, Phillips asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly, the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control; following his impeccable interior logic, passionately austere (Rita Dove,The Washington PostBook World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire-physical, emotional, and spiritual.

The Rest of Loveis a 2004 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.

Carl Phillipsis the author of six previous books of poems, includingRock HarborandThe Tether, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. The recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, he teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.