Elegy for a Broken Machine: Poems [Paperback]

Now in paperback, this stunning collection of elegies--a finalist for the National Book Award--bears witness to the small beauties and inevitable losses of our transient life.

Elegy for a Broken Machineis a son's lament for his father. It takes us from the luminous world of childhood to the fluorescent glare of operating rooms and recovery wards, and into the twilight lives of those who must go on. In one poem Phillips watches his sons play Mercy just as he did with his brother: hands laced, the stronger pushing the other back until he grunts for mercy, a game we played // so many times / I finally taught my sons, // not knowing what it was, / until too late, I'd done. Phillips documents the unsung joys of midlife, the betrayals of the human body, and his realization that as the crowd of ghosts grows, we take our places, next in line. The result is a twenty-first-century memento mori, fashioned not just from loss but also from praise, and a fierce love for the world in all its ruined splendor.

PATRICK PHILLIPSis the author of two previous poetry collections,BoyandChattahoochee, a work of nonfiction,Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America, and is translator ofWhen We Leave Each Other: Selected Poemsby the Danish writer Henrik Nordbrandt. His honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America. Phillips lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at Drew University.Elegy for a Broken Machine

My father was trying

to fix something

and I sat there just watching,

like I used to,

whenever something

went wrong.

I kept asking where he’d been,

until he put down a wrench

and said Listen:

dying’s just something

that happens sometimes.

Who knows