This second collection from Kate Tufts Award–winner Phillips (Chattahoochee
) is haunted by memories, could-have-beens and what-ifs, as when an infant son dies instead of recovering from a fever, or never even makes it through birth. Phillips is consumed with his vulnerability as a parent and finds himself lost in the cyclical recurrences of time: “What happened never happened on its own/ the future and the past collide.” Fatherhood, of course, also recalls mixed memories of being a son. Phillips enacts the anxiety and grief of the knowledge that there is no escape from death, no matter how much we may love and protect someone. “It will be the past/ and we'll live there together” the final poem begins; it ends: “It will be the past/ and it will last forever.” (Apr.)
