Poetry. Robert Phillips's NOW AND THEN: NEW & SELECTED POEMS are all he wishes to preserve from five decades of writing. In the words of James Dickey, Phillips's collection of poems is "engaging, open, and accessible, his subjects painstakingly explored." Drawing from ten past books of poetry and pulling in new work, this is a collection of poems with a "wry, self-deprecating intimacy and charm... not like anyone else writing today," says Carolyn Kizer. X.J. Kennedy says, "Robert Phillips is about the only living U.S. poet who never bores me." His prizes include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in poetry, and he teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, Texas.

Author City: Houston, TX USA

Robert Phillips, poet, fiction writer, critic, and former chairman of the National Book Award for poetry, is the author or editor of more than thirty books, three of which were named a "Memorable Book of the Year" by The New York Times. Phillips has individual collections of poetry with such publishers as Doubleday, Johns Hopkins University Press, and Ontario Review Press, and among his many prizes are the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a CAPS Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, a National Public Radio Fiction Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Arts Colony, and the Djerassi Foundation. He is the former director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, where he held an endowed chair as a John and Rebecca Moores University Professor.