Description
Elegy for a Broken Machine is Patrick Phillips’s third poetry collection and a powerful meditation on grief, memory, and inheritance. At its core, the book is a son’s elegy for his father, tracing a journey from childhood intimacy to hospital rooms, recovery wards, and the quiet aftermath of loss.
Phillips explores the unsung terrain of midlife: the betrayals of the body, the accumulation of ghosts, and the realization that each generation moves closer to the front of the line. His poems balance mourning with praise, recording moments of tenderness, regret, and fierce love for a world that is both damaged and beautiful. The collection stands as a contemporary memento mori, shaped not only by death, but by attention, memory, and endurance.
