Title: Credence
First published: 1996
Description: Written in the form of an annotated prose-poem, Credence quietly challenges the very possibility of "true belief" by submitting even the shards of narrative coherence in the poetry to further fracturing, until meaning itself becomes a blur of criss-crossing associations. Instead of leaving the reader with a sense of emptiness, however, Phillips' brilliant poem demonstrates how the very recognition of linguistic rupture can enrich meaning, can allow for a whole new range of possibilities of significance.

Ultimately "credence" is reestablished, not for a belief in a univocal world but in a social construct of many voices and tongues.
LC classification: PS3566.H4774 C74 1996