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POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION
Living Weapon 'is in conversation with a vast cast of historic forebears who enliven Phillips's examination of the meaning, morality and musicality of poetry, his 'living weapon'. . . and he is an eloquent and persuasive converser.' Kate Caoimhe Arthur, PN Review
Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a new blade of light homing in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere, four police officers enter a phone store, concrete pavements hang overhead. Phillips ruminates on violins and violence, on hatred and pleasure, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. His poetry reveals the limitations of our vocabulary, showing that our platitudes are inadequate to the brutal times we find ourselves in. And yet, through interrogation of allegory and symbol, names and things, time and musicality, a language of grace and urgency is found. For still our lives go on, and these are poems of survival as much as indictment. Living Weapon is a piercing, flaring collection from 'a virtuoso poetic voice' (Granta).
About the author
Rowan Ricardo Phillips is a poet, critic, and translator. His honours and awards include the Whiting Award, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, two PEN America awards and the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award. He is the editor of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and the poetry editor of the New Republic. His poetry collections include Silver (2024) and Living Weapon (2021). He divides his time between New York City and Barcelona.
Summary
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION
Living Weapon 'is in conversation with a vast cast of historic forebears who enliven Phillips's examination of the meaning, morality and musicality of poetry, his 'living weapon'. . . and he is an eloquent and persuasive converser.' Kate Caoimhe Arthur, PN Review
Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a new blade of light homing in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere, four police officers enter a phone store, concrete pavements hang overhead. Phillips ruminates on violins and violence, on hatred and pleasure, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. His poetry reveals the limitations of our vocabulary, showing that our platitudes are inadequate to the brutal times we find ourselves in. And yet, through interrogation of allegory and symbol, names and things, time and musicality, a language of grace and urgency is found. For still our lives go on, and these are poems of survival as much as indictment. Living Weapon is a piercing, flaring collection from 'a virtuoso poetic voice' (Granta).
Report
Living Weapon is a book that is both timeless and absolutely of its time. Subtle yet explicit, supple in its range of registers and fields of enquiry, it is full of moments of alluring and sensuous detail. Karen McCarthy Woolf Poetry Review
