Rest of Love

Striking new poems from a writer whose "lyric gift . . . outstrips all diversionary maneuvers." (Carol Moldaw, The Antioch Review)The light, for as far asI can see, is that of any number of late afternoons I remember still: how the lightseemed a bell; how it seemed I'd been livinginsider it, waiting - I'd heard all about that one clear note it gives. --from "Late Apollo III"In The 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 Post Book World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire-physical, emotional, and spiritual.The Rest of Love is a 2004 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.