Double Shadow

"There's an art/ to everything. Even/ turning away. How/ eventually even hunger/ can become a space/ to live in." Phillips's latest volume (after 2009's Speak Low) examines the double shadows (the shadow under/behind the shadow) that existence casts on human lives. His poems seem to live inside these shadows, casting their own kinds of light through layers of darkness. His lyrical lines meander, sometimes for stanzas, and they aren't always clear or understandable until they've gone by. Yet the reader is left with silhouettes of images that disturb and startle, like the field that "divides prayer from/ absolute defeat," like "snow caught/ flying over open water from a fast-moving train," like the deadly but elegant hawk's flight. Motion and stillness, wickedness and joy, love and a way of loving, gratitude and regret: doubling haunts this volume. "What if, between this one and the one/ we hoped for, there is a third life, taking its own/ slow dreamlike hold, even now—blooming, in spite of us?"