Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike

“ In her latest collection, the fiercely gifted Emilia Phillips offers a breviary of film noir koans (‘ public cases’ ) that interrogate, singly and collectively, what John Keats called the ‘ vale of soul-making.’ Each key- or peep-hole-shaped lyric presents a riddle, a ‘ scene,’ in and across which a fluid cast of characters (the vagrant, a child, the citizen, the lover, the diplomat, the mannequin, the archaeologist, the parade, the neighbors), including a host of animals (owl, snake, dog, cat, mice), appear and reappear in relation to recurring sites of possibility, most of them empty or dangerously inhabited— a metal chair, the crematory, a dairy, a heap of snow, a discarded tire, musical instruments, mouths, an abandoned house, a frozen pond. By playing with the discourse and tropes of clues, proofs, and evidence, Phillips remains true to the ineffability that haunts the crux of the body/soul mystery.” — Lisa Russ Spaar