Concrete

Author: John Phillips

Publisher: The Bodily Press (2025)

“It is this which Phillips most rigorously explores in these tightly wound poems—the elusive and inherently negative otherness concealed in every act of linguistic indication. And in using the short poem to explore the ambiguities and tensions woven deeply into the foundational structures of language, Phillips synthesizes Eastern and Western traditions…Phillips packages issues specific to continental philosophy in a rhetorical poetic form specific to East Asian literatures. In doing so, he reveals a transnational otherness which lies at the heart of both his own poetic project and the very structure of language.

“The value of these poems lies primarily in their ability to delicately couch monumental philosophical issues in short verse." —Richard Owens