To read Carl Phillips to enter a world of finely-wrought poems that explore mind and body, history and intimacy. Phillips is a professor of English and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and a much praised and honored…

Once upon a time, St. Louis's Delmar Loop used to be a fashionable shopping boulevard accessible by trolley car. But like many other great urban areas in the 1960s, white flight took a heavy toll on many St. Louis neighborhoods:…

Carl Phillips is the author of 10 books of poems, including most recently, "Speak Low." He is Professor of English and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program.

"Tangled Alphabets," on display now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is a dual retrospective of Argentine Leon Ferrari and Brazilian Mira Schendel, and the first major exhibition of their work in the United States.