On Stephanie Pippin

Stephanie Pippin has my absolute highest recommendation. Because Stephanie's work is so utterly original, it is difficult to know quite how to describe it. It's exacting, like Dickinson's, and characterized by a similar intelligence governed primarily by intuition, or that's the sense it leaves me with—in the way that excellence, true excellence, always looks effortless. She's a writer from whom I feel confident we'll be hearing much of in the future.

—Carl Phillips, author of six books of poetry, most recently Rock Harbor (2002). Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.