We can just call it the Carl Phillips reunion!' The award is given to mid-career poets such as Phillips, who is acclaimed for poems with sparse verse and deeply personal subject matter.įalmouth High reunion committee member Patricia (Baldic) Kilday was excited to hear Phillips had been located, and with such deep pockets.

He was more easily found, however, by Claremont Graduate University in California, where Phillips was named the 2002 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner.Ī coveted honor by poets worldwide, the trophy comes with a tidy check for $100,000. 'I think they can't find me and that's fine,' Phillips said in a telephone interview last week. Louis, where he teaches literature and poetry at Washington University. 'Where is Carl Phillips?' the committee asked, seeking the mild-mannered, serious student who, if there had been such a superlative, might have been named the most likely to disappear from a room without being noticed.Īfter graduating from Harvard, and teaching Latin at Falmouth High for five years, Phillips disappeared 10 years ago into the landscape of St. He just won one of the world's most prestigious awards for poetry. Is conscious,you can seestraight through the openĮye to where instinct falters becausefor once it has comedivided Release,a silence, as of some especially woundedanimal that, nevertheless, still 'Chamber Music'by Carl Phillips, from 'The Tether' Like something broken of wing,lying there.Other than breathing's rise, catch, FALMOUTH - When the Falmouth High School class of 1977's 25th reunion committee distributed a list of missing classmates last month, at least one alumnus was hiding in plain sight. Former high school student and teacher Carl Phillips wins prestigious national award.

The Tether by Carl Phillips