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In the Blood
A new edition of the first book of poems from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips, with a new afterword.
I am no mystic. I know
nothing rises that doesn’t
know how to already.
In my ears, only the clubbed
foot of routine, no voices, no
clatter of but I saw
what I saw
Even in his first book of poems, the deep contradictions in Carl Phillips’s work are already pronounced. Here is a subtle poet, attuned to the simple honesty of everyday speech, and yet steeped in classical allusion. Life here is quiet, yet burning with anger and unavoidable desire. Offering intimate statements of passion and yet retaining a private withholding, these poems take as their primary subject the body—growing, aging, loving—and spirit that fills the flesh.
When In the Blood was selected for the 1992 Morse Poetry Prize, Carl Phillips was a high-school Latin teacher. Thirty years later, he has written seventeen books of poetry, has received the Pulitzer Prize, and is one of the most prominent voices in contemporary poetry.
I am no mystic. I know
nothing rises that doesn’t
know how to already.
In my ears, only the clubbed
foot of routine, no voices, no
clatter of but I saw
what I saw
Even in his first book of poems, the deep contradictions in Carl Phillips’s work are already pronounced. Here is a subtle poet, attuned to the simple honesty of everyday speech, and yet steeped in classical allusion. Life here is quiet, yet burning with anger and unavoidable desire. Offering intimate statements of passion and yet retaining a private withholding, these poems take as their primary subject the body—growing, aging, loving—and spirit that fills the flesh.
When In the Blood was selected for the 1992 Morse Poetry Prize, Carl Phillips was a high-school Latin teacher. Thirty years later, he has written seventeen books of poetry, has received the Pulitzer Prize, and is one of the most prominent voices in contemporary poetry.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
Published March 17, 2026
About the author
Carl Phillips
89 books214 followersCarl Phillips is the highly acclaimed author of 10 collections of poetry.
He was born in 1959 to an Air Force family, who moved regularly throughout his childhood, until finally settling in his high-school years at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He holds degrees from Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Boston University and taught high-school Latin for eight years.
His first book, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and was heralded as the work of an outstanding newcomer in the field of contemporary poetry. His other books are Cortège (1995), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry; From the Devotions (1998), a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; Pastoral (2000), winner of the Lambda Literary Award; The Tether, (2001), winner of the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Rock Harbor (2002); The Rest of Love: Poems, a 2004 National Book Award finalist, for which Phillips also won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry; Riding Westward (2006); Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006 (2007); and Speak Low (2009), a 2009 National Book Award finalist. Two additional titles were published in the 2003-04 academic year: a translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes came out in September 2003, and a book of essays, Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry, was published in May 2004. Phillips is the recipient of, among others, a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Foundation Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review, as well as in anthologies, including eight times in the Best American Poetry series, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, and The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poets. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. He is a Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program.
He was born in 1959 to an Air Force family, who moved regularly throughout his childhood, until finally settling in his high-school years at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He holds degrees from Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Boston University and taught high-school Latin for eight years.
His first book, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and was heralded as the work of an outstanding newcomer in the field of contemporary poetry. His other books are Cortège (1995), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry; From the Devotions (1998), a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; Pastoral (2000), winner of the Lambda Literary Award; The Tether, (2001), winner of the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Rock Harbor (2002); The Rest of Love: Poems, a 2004 National Book Award finalist, for which Phillips also won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry; Riding Westward (2006); Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006 (2007); and Speak Low (2009), a 2009 National Book Award finalist. Two additional titles were published in the 2003-04 academic year: a translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes came out in September 2003, and a book of essays, Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry, was published in May 2004. Phillips is the recipient of, among others, a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Foundation Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review, as well as in anthologies, including eight times in the Best American Poetry series, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, and The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poets. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. He is a Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 28, 2026
That’s still why I write–to save myself, with the hope that the poems, if only as proof that we’re together in this, might incidentally rescue a few others. from In the Blood by Carl Phillips
The Afterword by Carl Phillips in this, the reprinting of his first book of poetry, is immensely moving, the story of how he came to write poetry and how it saved him. He wrote for himself, feeling they were “intensely private,” their acceptance an affirmation he never expected.
Phillips starting writing the poems in 1986 during a difficult time in his life, and a difficult time to be queer in America. I was working at a religious publishing house at the time, friends with a young man who was struggling with his sexual orientation, passing as straight. I was also friends with another young gay man, not open but not secret either. A woman told me she was afraid to use the telephone–all land lines then–after he had used it, fearful of AIDS.
I can imagine the impact that these moving, revealing, poems must have had at the time of their publication.
The book includes an Introduction by Rachel Hadas written in 1991/
Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a free book through NetGalley.
The Afterword by Carl Phillips in this, the reprinting of his first book of poetry, is immensely moving, the story of how he came to write poetry and how it saved him. He wrote for himself, feeling they were “intensely private,” their acceptance an affirmation he never expected.
Phillips starting writing the poems in 1986 during a difficult time in his life, and a difficult time to be queer in America. I was working at a religious publishing house at the time, friends with a young man who was struggling with his sexual orientation, passing as straight. I was also friends with another young gay man, not open but not secret either. A woman told me she was afraid to use the telephone–all land lines then–after he had used it, fearful of AIDS.
I can imagine the impact that these moving, revealing, poems must have had at the time of their publication.
The book includes an Introduction by Rachel Hadas written in 1991/
Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a free book through NetGalley.
May 24, 2026
This is a republish of Carl Phillips' first book of poetry almost twenty years after the fact, and it's neat to see his later in life reflections on his first collection. The language is lyrical as hell and the imagery is gorgeous. Worth a read this summer.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews