Award-winning poet Carl Phillips grapples with issues of authority, identity and beauty in these sensual and deeply intelligent critical essays. He attends to the life and art of poetry by examining traditions across literary and cultural histories, from the restiveness of the Psalms, the pleas and persuasions of George Herbert, and the identity politics of the Black Arts Movement, to the Classically inflected restraint and release of his own poetry. Together, their elegantly wrought prose acclaim Carl Phillips as one of our most persuasive contemporary critics.