Elegy for a Broken Machine: Poems

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 Machine is 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 b…