The poems in Phases are as interested in the creeping penumbral edge of language as they are in the shadowy fact of faith. Playful experiments with form swing to the conceptual ring's apegee, while a colloquy across history and place center the proverbial orbit. ""Mischa Willett has a music all his own, albeit a music informed by years of his attending to the inexhaustible songs that comprise both world poetry and sacred text. He plays, therefore, with received matter, and he employs surprising linguistic brilliance to compose oratoria that brighten the heart of his reader, even as they...

First scholarly edition of Philip James Bailey's epic masterpiece in a readable, modern volume.