The Rest Of Love: Poems

"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"
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.