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Price: U.S. $14.95
Series No.: NAP 03
ISBN: 978-1557130723, Pages:
American Literature, Poetry
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A WorldDennis Phillips
The short, mostly untitled poems in Phillips's ( The Hero Is Nothing ) second collection droop under multiple images of slumber. To wit: "We were asleep and a specter knocked" ("Sacrifice"); "Sleep, sister of drugged stupor" (untitled). The third volume in Sun & Moon's New American Poetry series may impact occasionally in celebrating subterranean, nocturnal forces, but it lacks focus. References to mythology abound, yet how they are connected--and what they signify--remain elusive. Often addressed to "you" or "she," poems nonetheless wander from their targets, with speakers only rarely characterized. Phillips's erotic sensibility is plain, as is the pleasure he takes in language, but his willingness to bury meaning and the seeming arbitrariness in his design may be evidence of artifice rather than of art. (Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.)
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Out of Print
Series No.: NAP 10
ISBN: 978-1557131270, Pages:
American Literature, Poetry
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ArenaDennis Phillips
The fragmentary words and phrases strung together in Phillips's (A World) new collection stretch the boundaries of minimalist form in a way that resembles the poetics of the Language school. Isolated lines such as Your interpretation of friendship. / But no one waited or Take a close look at power structures, / integrate them into your life are presented without any obvious context. After reading a few pages, one may see the bits and pieces begin to suggest a common theme: the attempt to locate the self that is lost in American mass culture. Phillips plays with language, tossing in foreign words, juxtaposing words with similar sounds and meanings. As he repeats or varies phrases, associations build. Phillips endows the mundane with new importance in lines like: I mean, who had cut her hair? The tension mounts within this abstract landscape, catching readers unaware. Suddenly it appears that a child has been hit by a car, the police have been called, the speaker is no longer in a city by the ocean, but shipwrecked on an island. Were their form more conventional, these poems would seem didactic; Phillips instead presents a compelling, if difficult, text.
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SALE PRICE: U.S. $9.95
Series No.: 161
ISBN: 978-1-933382-84-5, Pages: 574
American Literature, Fiction
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HopeDennis Phillips
Noted poet, author of Sand (Green Integer 67) and numerous other works, Dennis Phillips turns his talents to fiction in Hope. This, his first novel, is a work of two intertwining stories: one of a monk lured to an isolated island, the other of a contemporary man who first imagines himself imprisoned on an unknown island and later finds himself in a real island paradise, where "hope" is restored. Both stories represent kinds of imprisonment and torture, the first based on historical events, the second on the psychological confusion of the character. What Phillips ultimately reveals through the intertwining themes of these at first seemingly unrelated adventures is that beyond the horrors and everyday despair of living there is always the possibility of redemption, of hope and the salve of love in human life.
In this brilliantly structured and subtly nuanced fiction, Phillips has created one of his most inviting and redeeming works of his career.
Author of A World (1989), Arena (1991), Book of Hours (1996), Credence (1996), and Sand (2002) among other works of poetry, Phillips teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, the city where he lives with his wife, Courtney Gregg, and their daughter Sophia.
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SALE PRICE: U.S. $9.95
Series No.: 067
ISBN: 1-931243-43-3, Pages: 178
American Literature, Poetry
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SandDennis Phillips
In this new collection, his ninth book of poetry, noted Los Angeles poet Dennis Phillips explores the temporal: an world in which meaning, like a palm full of sand, is made up of small particles which come together in ever-shifting patterns. "Who walks the boundaries?" he asks, challenging the reader to make sense of that ever-changing reality.
Author of Credence, Study for the Ideal City, A World, Arena and other books, Dennis Phillips teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where he lives with his wife and child.
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