-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
And Selected Poems, 2007-2020
by Carl Phillips
Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. A new collection of poems from one of America's most essential, celebrated, and enduring poets, Carl Phillips's Then the War.
I'm a song, changing. I'm a light
rain falling through a vast
darkness toward a different
darkness.
Carl Phillips has aptly described his work as an "ongoing quest"; Then the War is the next step in that meaningful process of self-discovery for both the poet and his reader. The new poems, written in a time of rising racial conflict in the United States, with its attendant violence and uncertainty, find Phillips entering deeper into the landscape he has made his own: a forest of intimacy, queerness, and moral inquiry, where the farther we go, the more difficult it is to remember why or where we started.
Then the War includes a generous selection of Phillips's work from the previous thirteen years, as well as his recent lyric prose memoir, Among the Trees, and his chapbook, Star Map with Action Figures.
Ultimately, Phillips refuses pessimism, arguing for tenderness and human connection as profound forces for revolution and conjuring a spell against indifference and the easy escapes of nostalgia. Then the War is luminous testimony to the power of self-reckoning and to Carl Phillips as an ever-changing, necessary voice in contemporary poetry.
Pulitzer Prize, 2023
"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 ... 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." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With the incomparably gorgeous, deftly poetic sentences that make up his work, Carl Phillips has been exploring intimacy, sexuality, and interiority for more than a decade." ―Corinne Segal, Literary Hub
"A master class in [Phillips's] deceptively gentle voice and striking depictions of raw humanity ... Every selection provides a portal to this accomplished author's work. An important milestone in the still flourishing career of a most brilliant poet." ―Booklist
"Glowing confirmation that, as he enters his 60s, Phillips is writing better than ever. The poems that open Then the War are extraordinary ecological lyric verse, subtle and transformative." ―Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
"The poet Carl Phillips combines beauty and insight in syntactically surprising lines that always reward careful study ... an exquisite collection." ―Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Carl Phillips is a poet of enchantment and persuasion ... I couldn't mistake these poems for any other poet's work. In a moment obsessed with snappy performances, Phillips's poems are contemplative, rich, and troubled. They are rarely axiomatic or quotable. Often, their power lies in their unfolding." ―Richie Hofmann, Los Angeles Review of Books
This information about Then the War was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Carl Phillips is the author of 9 previous books of poems, including Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006; Riding Westward; and The Rest of Love, a National Book Award Finalist. His most recent collection, Speak Low, is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
If you liked Then the War, try these:
Looking at Women Looking at War
by Victoria Amelina
Published 2025
Destined to be a classic, a poet's powerful look at the courage of resistance.
by Daniel Mason
Published 2024
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
by Alice Winn
Published 2024
Winner: BookBrowse Debut Book Award 2023
A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during World War I.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
