num_pages: 256
description: The Award-winning poet Carl Phillips grapples with issues of authority, identity, and beauty in these sensual and deeply intelligent essaysThe "coin of the realm" is, classically, the currency that for any culture most holds value. In art, as in life, the poet Carl Phillips argues, that currency includes beauty, risk, and authority-values of meaning and complexity that all too often go disregarded. Together, these essays become an invaluable statement for the necessary-and necessarily difficult-work of the imagination and the will, even when, as Phillips states in his title essay, "the last thing that most human beings seem capable of trusting naturally-instinctively-is themselves, their own judgment."
language: English
title: Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry
titlecomplete: Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry
genres: Essays, Poetry, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 93
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Society of Midland Authors Award
category: Adult Nonfiction
publisher: Graywolf Press