A World

The short, mostly untitled poems in Phillips's ( The Hero Is Nothing ) second collection droop under multiple images of slumber. To wit: ``We were asleep and a specter knocked'' (``Sacrifice''); ``Sleep, sister of drugged stupor'' (untitled). The third volume in Sun & Moon's New American Poetry series may impact occasionally in celebrating subterranean, nocturnal forces, but it lacks focus. References to mythology abound, yet how they are connected--and what they signify--remain elusive. Often addressed to ``you'' or ``she,'' poems nonetheless wander from their targets, with speakers only rarely characterized. Phillips's erotic sensibility is plain, as is the pleasure he takes in language, but his willingness to bury meaning and the seeming arbitrariness in his design may be evidence of artifice rather than of art. (Jan.)