Scattered Snows, to the North
BOOK SUMMARY
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 to understand our past. If we remember a thing, did it happen? If we believe it didn't, does that make our belief true?
In Scattered Snows, to the North, Phillips looks through the window of the past to understand the essential sameness of the human condition: "Tears / were tears," mistakes were made and regretted or not, and it mattered until it didn't, the way people live until they don't. And there was also joy. And beauty. "Yet the world's still / so beautiful . . . Sometimes // it is . . ." And it was enough. And it still can be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carl Phillips is the author of numerous works of prose and poetry, including Then the War and Selected Poems, 2007–2020, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
PRAISE
"Carl Phillips is a poet of enchantment and persuasion . . . In a moment obsessed with snappy performances, Phillips's poems are contemplative, rich, and troubled." —Richie Hofmann, Los Angeles Review of Books
"One of the finest contemporary US writers." —Benjamin Voigt, Poetry Foundation
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Trade Paperback 80 pages Non-fiction 8.1 in H | 5.2 in W | 0.5 in T | 0.2 lb
