Graywolf Press
Graywolf Press

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Cortege

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Cover credits: Cover design: Jeanne Lee / Cover art: Evelyn Twitchell
"Out so much farther than our present pieties, attentive to no social or sentimental voice, only passion's (so often ruinous, defiant of upshot), it is not in every case, every poem, that Carl Phillips triumphs over my timidity. As with Sappho and Pasolini, though, traces of the winged god are everywhere unmistakable, even when this new poet has kicked them over: it is a sacred entail his harsh graces make. I for one am an awed (if lacerated) heir." —Richard Howard
Price: $12.95 USD
View all books 1-55597-230-6, 72 pages, Paper

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry

Cortège is concerned with the various directions that desire can take, and in particular seeks to explore that point at which the flesh and spirit intersect, addressing an inclusive audience of all human experience. Is it possible to sustain any kind of substantial lasting joy in the sexual world? The answer, says Phillips, is yes—but only after a kind of journey through the same hopes and fears that any epic hero seems to have. Self-doubt must be confronted, failures must be overcome—in other words, a general passing through death or its equivalent—and then, finally, an arrival at a success gained via lessons learned. Through this lens, Phillips offers a new understanding of how the struggle between flesh and spirit can be resolved—and how that understanding can in turn yield the courage to confront a sexual world that is often intimidating but now tempered though a newfound wisdom.


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