
Living Weapon
Poems
Rowan Ricardo Phillips(Author)
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc (Publisher)
Published on 18. February 2020
Book
Hardback
96 pages
978-0-374-19199-3 (ISBN)
Description
. . . and we'd do this again
And again and again, without ever
Knowing we were the weapon ourselves,
Stronger than steel, story, and hydrogen.
- from "Even Homer Nods"
A revelation, a shoring up, a transposition: Rowan Ricardo Phillips's Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a new blade of light honed in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere; four NYPD officers enter a cellphone store; concrete sidewalks hang overhead. Here, in his third collection of poems, Phillips offers us ruminations on violins and violence, on hatred, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. Living Weapon reveals to us the limitations of our vocabulary, that our platitudes are not enough for the brutal times in which we find ourselves. But still, our lives go on, and these are poems of survival as much as they are an indictment. Couched in language both wry and ample, Living Weapon is a piercing addition from a "virtuoso poetic voice" (Granta).
And again and again, without ever
Knowing we were the weapon ourselves,
Stronger than steel, story, and hydrogen.
- from "Even Homer Nods"
A revelation, a shoring up, a transposition: Rowan Ricardo Phillips's Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a new blade of light honed in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere; four NYPD officers enter a cellphone store; concrete sidewalks hang overhead. Here, in his third collection of poems, Phillips offers us ruminations on violins and violence, on hatred, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. Living Weapon reveals to us the limitations of our vocabulary, that our platitudes are not enough for the brutal times in which we find ourselves. But still, our lives go on, and these are poems of survival as much as they are an indictment. Couched in language both wry and ample, Living Weapon is a piercing addition from a "virtuoso poetic voice" (Granta).
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
234 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-374-19199-3 (9780374191993)
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E-Book
02/2020
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
€9.99
Available for download
Person
Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of two books of poems (The Ground, Heaven) and two essay collections (The Circuit, When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness). His many awards include a Whiting Writers' Award, the PEN/Osterweil Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, and the Nicolas Guillen Outstanding Book Award. He lives in New York City and Barcelona.