Circumstances Beyond Our Control

Robert Phillips is a John and Rebecca Moores Professor at the University of Houston and literary executor of the American poets Delmore Schwartz and Karl Shapiro. His poetry has won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Creative Artists' Public Service Award from New York State, and a Pushcart Prize, among others. His collection Breakdown Lane was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review.

Phillips is a skillful poet of occasions, imitations, and pastiche, all offered up with a serious yet insouciant expression of 'I'll try this, too.' Hudson Review A high-spirited mix of playfulness, memory and social observation. -- Fritz Lanham Houston Chronicle Clear, direct, accessible, and frequently very funny, Robert Phillips' poems should be better known. -- Peter Schmitt Sun-Sentinel An originally and consistently entertaining poet. Robert Phillips's plainspoken eloquence provides a tonic for readers who find that much contemporary poetry has little to say to them. Review of Texas Books Whether admiring Phillips's exceptional craftsmanship, enjoying the humor that infiltrates even his most serious poems, or warming to the deep humaneness of his spirit, a reader feels at home in this collection, and in good company. Phi Kappa Phi Forum Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire is extremely readable, and I would recommend it most particularly to anyone seeking a brief introduction to several of the key debates in medical history for the period: the notion of the medical marketplace; the dichotomy (or, rather, absence thereof) between temple and secular medicine; the links between the spread of empire and that of physicians, medical ideas, and pharmacological ingredients. Isis Martyrs Mirror has shaped the Anabaptist tradition more powerfully than any book besides the Bible... Like its subject material, Weaver-Zercher's book is both ambitious and impressive. It constitutes an overview-in-miniature of Anabaptist history. Weaver-Zercher's book is the invaluable latest entry in this ongoing and highly contested debate. Just as some ministers recommend that van Braght's text grace every household, Martyrs Mirror: A Social History belongs in the repertoire of all historically minded Anabaptists, a mirror from our troubled past onto this uncertain present. Mennonite World Review

• AcknowledgmentsI. Fire & ObsessionThe OceanGhost StoryThe Grown-up TrainAn Empty SuitExpulsionThe Snow QueenLife ForceHomage: NerudaOde to a BananaAfter Reading The Book of QuestionsVariations on Vallejo's "Black Stone on a White Stone"Triangle Shirtwaist Factory FireTwo Twentieth-Century American MonologuesTed Bundy, Stalker RapistTexas Cheerleader Murder PlotFamous Last WordsEndymion and SeleneMy Funny ValentineTwo for Max EbertsBlue JayTrees in SpringtimeSan Miguel de AllendeII. a little light musicMemoryLife and LimbHeadlinesMiss PerfectoResponse to Barbara Walters' Most Fatuous QuestionSoliloquy of the Ethiopian EunuchIII. ritualsSunday RitualsTwo for Mister Roscoe"Arsh Potatoes"Grandfather's CarsTo a Schoolteacher Now DeadViewingTwo SonnetsHer Life at SevenChance EncounterDays of 1964The Ruined ManBucolicsMop and NestWisteria and FenceInsomniaTwp Adaptations from Red PineWaiting for a FriendParting from a Friend on a Night in SpringChristopher IsherwoodVita