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Circumstances Beyond Our Control

Poems

Robert Phillips

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Robert Phillips is a prominent member of America's neglected "transition generation" of poets—those born in the late 1930s and early 1940s. His work has been included in many anthologies and textbooks. He gathers for his seventh full-length collection his best poems of the past six years, from dramatic monologues to personal lyrics. While most are free-verse, there are also sonnets, a villanelle, a ballade, an abecedarian, found poems, prose poems, haiku, and clerihews.

Divided into three sections—"Fire and Obsession," "A Little Light Music," and "Rituals"—this new volume reveals Phillips's...

Robert Phillips is a prominent member of America's neglected "transition generation" of poets—those born in the late 1930s and early 1940s. His work has been included in many anthologies and textbooks. He gathers for his seventh full-length collection his best poems of the past six years, from dramatic monologues to personal lyrics. While most are free-verse, there are also sonnets, a villanelle, a ballade, an abecedarian, found poems, prose poems, haiku, and clerihews.

Divided into three sections—"Fire and Obsession," "A Little Light Music," and "Rituals"—this new volume reveals Phillips's playfulness and good humor, his high intelligence, and his musicality.

Reviews

Reviews

Phillips is a skillful poet of occasions, imitations, and pastiche, all offered up with a serious yet insouciant expression of 'I'll try this, too.'

A high-spirited mix of playfulness, memory and social observation.

Clear, direct, accessible, and frequently very funny, Robert Phillips' poems should be better known.

An originally and consistently entertaining poet. Robert Phillips's plainspoken eloquence provides a tonic for readers who find that much contemporary poetry has little to say to them.

Whether admiring Phillips's exceptional craftsmanship, enjoying the humor that infiltrates even his most serious poems, or warming to the deep humaneness of his spirit, a reader feels at home in this collection, and in good company.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
5.5
x
9
Pages
88
ISBN
9780801883781
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
I. Fire & Obsession
The Ocean
Ghost Story
The Grown-up Train
An Empty Suit
Expulsion
The Snow Queen
Life Force
Homage: Neruda
Ode to a Banana
After Reading The Book of Questions
Variations on

Acknowledgments
I. Fire & Obsession
The Ocean
Ghost Story
The Grown-up Train
An Empty Suit
Expulsion
The Snow Queen
Life Force
Homage: Neruda
Ode to a Banana
After Reading The Book of Questions
Variations on Vallejo's "Black Stone on a White Stone"
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Two Twentieth-Century American Monologues
Ted Bundy, Stalker Rapist
Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot
Famous Last Words
Endymion and Selene
My Funny Valentine
Two for Max Eberts
Blue Jay
Trees in Springtime
San Miguel de Allende
II. a little light music
Memory
Life and Limb
Headlines
Miss Perfecto
Response to Barbara Walters' Most Fatuous Question
Soliloquy of the Ethiopian Eunuch
III. rituals
Sunday Rituals
Two for Mister Roscoe
"Arsh Potatoes"
Grandfather's Cars
To a Schoolteacher Now Dead
Viewing
Two Sonnets
Her Life at Seven
Chance Encounter
Days of 1964
The Ruined Man
Bucolics
Mop and Nest
Wisteria and Fence
Insomnia
Twp Adaptations from Red Pine
Waiting for a Friend
Parting from a Friend on a Night in Spring
Christopher Isherwood
Vita

Author Bio
Robert Phillips
Featured Contributor

Robert Phillips

Robert Phillips is a John and Rebecca Moores Professor at the University of Houston and literary executor of the American poets Delmore Schwartz and Karl Shapiro. His poetry has won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Creative Artists' Public Service Award from New York State, and a Pushcart Prize, among others. His collection Breakdown Lane was named a Notable...