Circumstances Beyond Our Control: Poems

by Robert Phillips

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801883781
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2006
Series:	Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Phillips is a John and Rebecca Moores Professor at the University of Houston and literary executor of the American poets Delmore Schwartz and Karl Shapiro. His poetry has won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Creative Artists' Public Service Award from New York State, and a Pushcart Prize, among others. His collection Breakdown Lane was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
I. Fire & Obsession
The Ocean
Ghost Story
The Grown-up Train
An Empty Suit
Expulsion
The Snow Queen
Life Force
Homage: Neruda
Ode to a Banana
After Reading The Book of Questions
Variations on Vallejo's "Black Stone on a White Stone"
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Two Twentieth-Century American Monologues
Ted Bundy, Stalker Rapist
Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot
Famous Last Words
Endymion and Selene
My Funny Valentine
Two for Max Eberts
Blue Jay
Trees in Springtime
San Miguel de Allende
II. a little light music
Memory
Life and Limb
Headlines
Miss Perfecto
Response to Barbara Walters' Most Fatuous Question
Soliloquy of the Ethiopian Eunuch
III. rituals
Sunday Rituals
Two for Mister Roscoe
"Arsh Potatoes"
Grandfather's Cars
To a Schoolteacher Now Dead
Viewing
Two Sonnets
Her Life at Seven
Chance Encounter
Days of 1964
The Ruined Man
Bucolics
Mop and Nest
Wisteria and Fence
Insomnia
Twp Adaptations from Red Pine
Waiting for a Friend
Parting from a Friend on a Night in Spring
Christopher Isherwood
Vita

What People are Saying About This

Marianne Moore

All lines so veracious.

James Dickey

His work is engagingly open and accessible, his subjects painstakingly explored.

Richard Wilbur

Through all of the poems moves Mr. Phillips's inimitable voice—easy-going, spare, engaging, and inclined to comedy. Some of the richness comes from the equable telling of poignant or bitter things; it is like hearing depth charges in a calm sea.

Carolyn Kizer

There is a wry, self-deprecating intimacy and charm in Robert Phillips' poems that are not like anyone else writing today.

From the Publisher

All lines so veracious.
—Marianne Moore

His work is engagingly open and accessible, his subjects painstakingly explored.
—James Dickey

There is a wry, self-deprecating intimacy and charm in Robert Phillips' poems that are not like anyone else writing today.
—Carolyn Kizer

Through all of the poems moves Mr. Phillips's inimitable voice—easy-going, spare, engaging, and inclined to comedy. Some of the richness comes from the equable telling of poignant or bitter things; it is like hearing depth charges in a calm sea.
—Richard Wilbur

Editorial Reviews

Phillips is a skillful poet of occasions, imitations, and pastiche, all offered up with a serious yet insouciant expression of 'I'll try this, too.'
—Hudson Review

A high-spirited mix of playfulness, memory and social observation.
—Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle

Clear, direct, accessible, and frequently very funny, Robert Phillips' poems should be better known.
—Peter Schmitt, Sun-Sentinel

An originally and consistently entertaining poet. Robert Phillips's plainspoken eloquence provides a tonic for readers who find that much contemporary poetry has little to say to them.
—Review of Texas Books

Whether admiring Phillips's exceptional craftsmanship, enjoying the humor that infiltrates even his most serious poems, or warming to the deep humaneness of his spirit, a reader feels at home in this collection, and in good company.
—Phi Kappa Phi Forum

Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire is extremely readable, and I would recommend it most particularly to anyone seeking a brief introduction to several of the key debates in medical history for the period: the notion of the medical marketplace; the dichotomy (or, rather, absence thereof) between temple and secular medicine; the links between the spread of empire and that of physicians, medical ideas, and pharmacological ingredients.
—Isis

Martyrs Mirror has shaped the Anabaptist tradition more powerfully than any book besides the Bible . . . Like its subject material, Weaver-Zercher’s book is both ambitious and impressive. It constitutes an overview-in-miniature of Anabaptist history. Weaver-Zercher’s book is the invaluable latest entry in this ongoing and highly contested debate. Just as some ministers recommend that van Braght’s text grace every household, Martyrs Mirror: A Social History belongs in the repertoire of all historically minded Anabaptists, a mirror from our troubled past onto this uncertain present.
—Mennonite World Review

From the Publisher

Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire is extremely readable, and I would recommend it most particularly to anyone seeking a brief introduction to several of the key debates in medical history for the period: the notion of the medical marketplace; the dichotomy (or, rather, absence thereof) between temple and secular medicine; the links between the spread of empire and that of physicians, medical ideas, and pharmacological ingredients.

Isis

Martyrs Mirror has shaped the Anabaptist tradition more powerfully than any book besides the Bible . . . Like its subject material, Weaver-Zercher’s book is both ambitious and impressive. It constitutes an overview-in-miniature of Anabaptist history. Weaver-Zercher’s book is the invaluable latest entry in this ongoing and highly contested debate. Just as some ministers recommend that van Braght’s text grace every household, Martyrs Mirror: A Social History belongs in the repertoire of all historically minded Anabaptists, a mirror from our troubled past onto this uncertain present.

Mennonite World Review

Phillips is a skillful poet of occasions, imitations, and pastiche, all offered up with a serious yet insouciant expression of 'I'll try this, too.'

Hudson Review

Clear, direct, accessible, and frequently very funny, Robert Phillips' poems should be better known.

— Peter Schmitt

Sun-Sentinel

A high-spirited mix of playfulness, memory and social observation.

— Fritz Lanham

Houston Chronicle

An originally and consistently entertaining poet. Robert Phillips's plainspoken eloquence provides a tonic for readers who find that much contemporary poetry has little to say to them.

Review of Texas Books

A high-spirited mix of playfulness, memory and social observation.

Houston Chronicle - Fritz Lanham

Whether admiring Phillips's exceptional craftsmanship, enjoying the humor that infiltrates even his most serious poems, or warming to the deep humaneness of his spirit, a reader feels at home in this collection, and in good company.

Phi Kappa Phi Forum

Clear, direct, accessible, and frequently very funny, Robert Phillips' poems should be better known.

Sun-Sentinel - Peter Schmitt