Robert Phillips is a prominent member of America's neglected "transition generation" of poets—those born in the late 1930s and early 1940s. His work has been included in many anthologies and textbooks. He gathers for his seventh full-length collection his best poems of the past six years, from dramatic monologues to personal lyrics. While most are free-verse, there are also sonnets, a villanelle, a ballade, an abecedarian, found poems, prose poems, haiku, and clerihews.
Divided into three sections—"Fire and Obsession," "A Little Light Music," and "Rituals"—this new volume reveals Phillips's playfulness and good humor, his high intelligence, and his musicality.