Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 2023Then the War and Selected Poems, 2007–2020 is two books in one: a representative selection from seven of Carl Phillips's innovative earlier collections and a complete new book of poems, providing a powerful introduction to European readers. A seemingly gentle but resolute attention to the things of this world evokes the joyful and painful elements in the contemporary human condition, characterised by loneliness a...

A new book of poems from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Phillips.Is this who I must be,or maybe justwhat I am?“Sir” is an honorific, a title that indicates the superiority of its recipient, the subordination of its speaker. Carl Phillips’s SIR examines power and submission, abandon and restraint, whether in our personal, intimate relationships with others and ourselves, or in our relationships with such abstract masters...

A new edition of the first book of poems from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips, with a new afterword.*I am no mystic. I knownothing rises that doesn’tknow how to already.In my ears, only the clubbedfoot of routine, no voices, noclatter of dreams: but I sawwhat I saw*Even in his first book of poems, the deep contradictions in Carl Phillips’s work are already pronounced. Here is a subtle poet, attuned to the s...

A new edition of the first book of poems from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips, with a new afterword.*I am no mystic. I knownothing rises that doesn’tknow how to already.In my ears, only the clubbedfoot of routine, no voices, noclatter of dreams: but I sawwhat I saw*Even in his first book of poems, the deep contradictions in Carl Phillips’s work are already pronounced. Here is a subtle poet, attuned to the s...

Shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize 2025Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2024Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2024A New York Times Poetry Book of the Year 2024Carl Phillips's Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowledge that's rooted in (always unstable) human memory. If the poet's recent books have been engaged w...

An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips.Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that’s based on human memory. If the poet’s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one focuses on vulnerability: the usefulness of embracing it and of releasing ourselves from the need ...

An innovative roadmap to facing our past and present selvesHonest, aching, and intimate, self-elegies are unique poems focusing on loss rather than death, mourning versions of the self that are forgotten or that never existed. Within their lyrical frame, multiple selves can coexist—wise and naïve, angry and resigned—along with multiple timelines, each possible path stemming from one small choice that both creates new selves and negates potential selves. Giving voi...

An invaluable companion for writers at every stage of their journey to make the writing life a more complex and cooperative ventureIn this intimate and eloquent meditation, the award-winning poet Carl Phillips shares lessons he has learned about what he calls an “apprenticeship to what can never fully be mastered,” through forty years of teaching and mentoring emerging writers. He weaves together his experiences as a poet and prose writer with discussions of undere...

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poetry: A Luminous Journey of Self-Discovery"I'm a song, changing. I'm a lightrain falling through a vastdarkness toward a differentdarkness."In his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Then the War, celebrated American poet Carl Phillips continues his ongoing quest of self-discovery and exploration. Written amidst rising racial conflict and uncertainty in the United States, these poems delve deeper into ...

The Spring 2021 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and remains prescient in the digital age by providing readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”As guest-editor Laura van den Berg writes in her introduction, “At its core, literatu...

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the general editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions,...

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the general editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions,...