Then the War and Selected Poems, 2007–2020

Combining new and old poems from the last 13 years with sections of his lyric prose memoir, "Among the Trees," this selected offers admirers of Phillips's work a chance to revisit his masterful poems, and new readers an opportunity to see the evolution of a vital presence in American poetry. There is a deceptive looseness in Phillips's poems, which are conversational and intimate, heightening the poet's abiding concern with nuance. He begins "The Difficulty": "It's as if the difficulty were less about what happened—/ the truth presumably—than how little/ what happened resembles the story/ of what happened." Often, he lays two ideas side by side as a way of exploring how beings (fathers, lovers, dogs, to name a few) affect one another: "what isn't love—at all—/ can begin to feel like love" ("Of California"); "as if to be plundered meant at least not being alone" ("Among the Trees"). These lyrically rich, insightful poems are full of palpable aching—"like the rhyme between lost/ and most"—and a human urge to understand. This remarkable compendium is a testament to the spirit of Phillips's work. (Feb.)