A stunning new collection of poems from the author of Speak Low Comparing any human life to "a restless choir" of impulses variously in conflict and at peace with one another, Carl Phillips, in his eleventh book, examines the double shadow that a life casts forth: "now risk, and now / faintheartedness." In poems that both embody and inhabit this double shadow, risk and faintheartedness prove to have the power equally to rescue us from ourselves and to destroy us. Spare, haunted, and haunting, yet not without hope, Double Shadow argues for life as a wilderness through which there's only the questing forward-with no regrets and no looking back.
"[Phillips'] prayer-like poems create a magical, paganistic landscape that seems to offer visual sublimation for spiritual struggle, neither defying nor accepting skepticism. It is as if one were to re-learn through Phillips' mystical imagery how to pray--a new kind of prayer inspired by faith, disbelief, or even the inability to choose between the two . . . Striking images, which replace both fai
Shijung Kim, The Harvard Crimson
"There are gorgeous moments of candor and unrestrained humanity in this collection, but for all its striking human sensitivity, there are still dark spaces in Double Shadow that are classic Carl Phillips. Even in its darkest lines, Double Shadow embodies a twisted sense of optimism . . . Double Shadow fully embodies the tension between unwillingness and inability, resignation and despair. It manag
