"I want to be surprised by how language is used, and I want to be shown in an entirely new way something I thought I understood," said Phillips, professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies and director of the Creative Writing Program, all in Arts & Sciences. "If I read a poem and it merely tells me what I knew already, I question why the poem needed to be written in the first place. I appreciate most those poems that challenge my preconceptions.

Carl Phillips

"I think of the poem as a space within which to wrestle with seemingly unanswerable questions: Who am I? What is life? What is devotion? I'll admit, that puts me on the gloomier end of the spectrum of poetry, perhaps, but it's the one I prefer."

Several people share Phillips' views on poetry, as he recently received the 2002 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given by Claremont Graduate University. The award carries a prize of $100,000, the largest sum awarded for a collection of poetry.

Phillips will receive the award April 26 in a ceremony at Claremont McKenna College in California.

The award is for Phillips' fifth book, The Tether (2001), a collection of lyric poems focusing on some of life's deepest and darkest issues.

Phillips started the collection while at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop and finished it upon his return to Washington University. As such, the book is divided into two distinct sections.

Then the terms of need -- of themselves -- reversed, only incompletely: he became as, for long, I had been; and I -- I was still myself. -- From "Safari Figure," The Tether

"I don't write toward a theme," Phillips said of the poems in The Tether. "These are just poems that came to me while I was on leave. The theme of connection, of those intangibles that hold us to one another, or don't, physically and spiritually -- none of that was a plan, but a pattern that emerged along the way."

Which is similar to how Phillips found poetry. As part of an Air Force family, Phillips often moved. But the instability of his early life might have unknowingly started him on his pursuit of writing as a piece of the world to be carried away.

While teaching high school Latin for eight years, Phillips found himself constantly writing on the side.

"I think of the whole process of writing as a gesture of inquiry," he said, "and there are always questions to be asked. I keep returning, it seems, to issues I've previously explored, in part because we change; we get older; our relationship to the world changes. The rest of it -- prizes, awards, attention -- by the time those things happen, if they do, the reason for putting a given poem down on the page has already come and gone, and I've moved on to the next thing."

And the next thing for Phillips, whose From The Devotions (1998) was a finalist for the National Book Award, is a collection titled Rock Harbor, due out this fall.

Although he has been successful, with fellowships bestowed by both the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress among others, he doesn't write with awards or tangible compensation in mind.

"I'm aware that awards are out there," he admitted, "but at the same time I'm always surprised if the poems get any attention at all. I don't write them with other people in mind, not readers anyway, so (the Kingsley Tufts Award has) been a bit overwhelming. People keep asking about my plans for the award money, but I haven't been able to think about that yet. I'm still so moved by the honor itself.

"And in the end, though it's exciting and gives confidence when distinguished writers and editors admire the work, it doesn't make the next poem any easier to write."