Phillips is a poet of long discursive lines and an ability to describe the human predicament in philosophical and interesting associations, often to do with nature and landscapes - particularly here, horses, bees, and the sea. In the title poem of this new collection he associates the problem of memory, what we remember that we wouldn't if we got to choose what we remember, with horses long tamed being freed and unexpectedly re-entering a past state of being, suggesting there's a kind of violence to it. "There's so much I'd rather not remember, that to be asked to do so can seem a cruelty, almost" is a sentiment most readers can likely identify with - the memories bringing back what was lost, what could have been, but wasn't.

On a first reading my favorite of these poems is "On Being Asked To Be More Specific When It Comes To Longing", a poem about either love or existential meaning, maybe both. In the poem, the speaker comes into a meadow of silverrod plants, "each stem briefly an angled argument against despair, then only weeds by a better name again", and stumbles through the twilight, his actions "like taking a horsewhip to a swarm of bees, that they might more easily disperse", until finally he comes to a sort of revelation "from the smudged edge of all that seemed to be left of what we'd called belief, once", seeing the human body "made out of a ruin a light" used to both find ourselves and each other, for "when afraid, what is faith, but to make a gift of yourself - give; and you shall receive", he concludes, quoting from the gospel of Luke.

But there's so much more; a Phillips collection always rewards continuous returns, letting the waves wash over and break, and recede, and wash over and break, and recede... a rhythmical pattern within that is deeply true. ( )