Spinach Days

by Robert S. Phillips

"Three cheers for Robert Phillips. We need more poets like him."―Robert Richman, New York Times Robert Phillips is a prominent figure in what has been called America's neglected "transition generation"―poets born in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Spinach Days is his sixth full-length collection, following his critically acclaimed Breakdown Lane (Johns Hopkins, 1994), named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times . In content and in its various use of forms, Spinach Days is Phillips' most innovative book yet. There are long narratives and short lyrics, villanelles and somonkas, haiku and found poems, free verse and eclogues, on subjects ranging from St. Francis to the Holocaust, from Jung's concept of the anima to a particular bit of American folklore on the gangster John Dillinger. Throughout, the poet's memory is the cohesive force, mixing events of childhood with adulthood, rural life with big-city life, love with loss, and humorous events with tragic ones. Phillips reveals himself to be a master of closure, and he writes as one who delights in the liveliness of language and wordplay.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

American poet, author and editor, usually publishes under the name Robert Phillips.

Robert S. Phillips was born 1938 in Milford, Delaware and is the author or editor of some 30 volumes of poetry, fiction, criticism, and belles lettres and publishes in numerous journals. A graduate of Syracuse University's creative writing program, he is currently (May 2007) a professor of English at the University of Houston; he was also director of the Creative Writing Program there from 1991 to 1996. His honors include a 1996 Enron Teaching Excellence Award, a Pushcart Prize, an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant in Poetry, MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Fellowships, a National Public Radio Syndicated Fiction Project Award, a Syracuse University Arents Pioneer Medal, and Texas Institute of Letters membership. In 1998 he was named a John and Rebecca Moore Scholar at the University of Houston.
[Portions of biographical sketch taken from Mr. Phillips' faculty home page at the University of Houston, http://www.uh.edu/cwp/faculty/phillip..., retrieved 11 May 2007.]

Source

Reviews

[Mario Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here for the poetry.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 P5629s 2000