Wild Is the Wind: Poems

Description

What has restlessness been for?

In Wild Is the Wind, Carl Phillips reflects on love as depicted in the jazz standard for which the book is namedlove that is at once restless, reckless, and yet desired for its potential to bring stability. In the process, he pitches estrangement against communion, examines the past as history versus the past as memory, and reflects on the pasts capacity both to teach and to mislead usand also to make us hesitate in the face of love, given the loss and damage that are, often enough, loves fallout. How to say no to despair? How to take perhaps that greatest risk, the risk of believing in what offers no guarantee? These poems that, in their wedding of the philosophical, meditative, and lyric modes, mark a new stage in his remarkable work, stand as further proof that if Carl Phillips had not come onto the scene, we would have needed to invent him. His idiosyncratic style, his innovative method, and his unique voice are essential steps in the evolution of the craft (Judith Kitchen, The Georgia Review).

Author Information

Carl Phillips is the author of thirteen previous books of poetry, including Reconnaissance, winner of the PEN Center USA’s Poetry Award and the Lambda Literary Award, and Double Shadow, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.