Reconnaissance ─ Poems

A powerful, inventive collection from one of America's most respected poets

There's

a trembling inside the both of us,

there's a trembling, inside us both.

The territory of Reconnaissance is one where morals threaten to become merely "what the light falls through," "suffering [seems] in fact for nothing," and "all we do is maybe all we can do." In the face of this, Carl Phillips, reconsidering and unraveling what we think we know, maps out the contours of a world in revision, where truth lies captured at one moment and at the next goes free, transformed. These are poems of searing beauty, lit by hope and shadowed by it, from a poet whose work "reinstates the possibility of finding meaning in a world that is forever ready to revoke the sources of meaning in our lives" (Jonathan Farmer,Slate).

Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Silverchest, a finalist for the International Griffin Prize, andDouble Shadow, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His most recent book of prose isThe Art of Daring: Risk, Restlessness, Imagination. Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.