Wild Is the Wind

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A powerful, inventive collection from one of America''s most critically admired poets

âWhat has restlessness been for?â

In Wild Is the Wind, Carl Phillips reflects on love as depicted in the jazz standard for which the book is namedâ"love at once restless, reckless, and yet desired for its potential to bring stability. In the process, he pitches estrangement against communion, examines the past as history versus the past as memory, and reflects on the pastâs capacity both to teach and to mislead usâ"also to make us hesitate in the face of love, given the loss and damage that are, often enough, loveâs fallout. How âto say no to despairâ? How to take perhaps that greatest risk, the risk of believing in what offers no guarantee? These poems that, in their wedding of the philosophical, meditative, and lyric modes, mark a new stage in Phillipsâs remarkable work, stand as further proof that âif Carl Phillips had not come onto the scene, we would have needed to invent him. His idiosyncratic style, his innovative method, and his unique voice are essential steps in the evolution of the craftâ (Judith Kitchen, The Georgia Review).