My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing

Poet Phillips (Then the War) offers a beautiful collection of essays on the writing life. Noting that “this book doesn’t claim to unveil any mysteries about writing,” Phillips instead offers thoughtful meditations on “how to live, as a writer.” “Silence” looks at how the absence of sound is “a lot like writing... relative, and private.” “Practice” covers routine and repetition, and “Ambition” investigates whether art is “necessary”: “I wrote... as a form of therapy, as I got closer to understanding the sexuality I was too afraid of, in myself, to confront otherwise.” “Stamina,” meanwhile, considers the “urgency” he felt while writing to resolve the “conundrum” of his “being a gay man,” while in “Community,” he recounts how he was dismissed from a writing workshop because his work was not “correctly ‘Black,’ ” and how an annual classicist conference sustained him during the lonely years he worked as a high school Latin teacher. Phillips’s reflections are as much about his personal development as they are a peek behind the curtain for budding writers, who will find a fair share of solid guidance: “Take praise when and if you can get it, but don’t forget that it was never the point.” This pensive account of the writing life delivers. (Nov.)