Robert Phillips

Robert Schaeffer Phillips (1938 – January 21, 2022 ). He worked on accounts for Revlon, Clearasil, and Ford Motor Company. He was a copywriter and vice president with Benton & Bowles, J. Walter Thompson and BBDO. He and his wife took a position in the Dusseldorf, Germany office of Grey Global Group, where he had opportunities to travel to places like Paris and London. Eventually he returned to New York and worked at several other agencies. He later directed the Creative Writing Program there from 1991 to 1996). His predecessor was Donald Barthelme.

Phillips served as the chairman of the Poets' Prize and the Players's clubin New York City.

Honors and awards Phillip's writings have received a Pushcart Prize, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant in Poetry, MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Fellowships, a NPR Syndicated Fiction Project Award, Enron Teaching Excellence Award (1996), George Arents Pioneer Medal Award, Syracuse University's highest honor for alumni (1988), Starting in 2019, the award includes a $500 advance and publication with Texas A&M University Press.

A collection of Phillips's work & personal papers, the Robert S. Phillips Papers, is housed in the Special Collections Research Center of Bird Library at Syracuse University. The collection contains his correspondence, writings, and memorabilia such as programs and announcements and issues of various periodicals in which Phillips’ work appears. The Wounded Angel (Brighton Press) Public Landing Revisited (Story Line Press) Breakdown Lane (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) Spinach Days (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000) News About People You Know. Collected Stories. (Texas Review Press, 2002) Now & Then: New and Selected Poems. (Ashland Poetry Press, 2009). Ice House Sketches. (Texas Review Press, 2011).

Books Published - Critical Studies, Nonfiction, Works Edited Confessional Poets. Literary criticism reviewing the genre—with leading practitioners such Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, W. D. Snodgrass, and John Berryman, (Southern Illinois University Press, 1973). Denton Welch (Twayne's English Authors). Critical introduction. (Twayne Pub, 1974). Aspects of Alice: Lewis Carroll's Dream Child as Seen Through the Critics' Looking-glasses. Collection of essays selected and introduced by Phillips. (Harmondsworth/Penguin Books, 1974) Delmore Schwartz and James Laughlin: Selected Letters (Editor). (W. W. Norton: 1978). William Goyen. Critical introduction. (Twayne Publishers, 1979). The Stories of Denton Welch. (Dutton, 1986). Shenandoah: And Other Verse Plays by Delmore Schwartz (Editor). (BOA Editions, 1991). New Selected Poems of Marya Zaturenska (Editor) (Syracuse University Press, 2001). The Madness of Art (Syracuse University Press, 2003). Interviews with William Goyen, Philip Larkin, Joyce Carol Oates, Karl Shapiro, William Jay Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, William Styron, and Marya Zaturenska. William Goyen: Selected Letters from a Writer’s Life. (Editor). (University of Texas Press, 2014). Coda: Last Poems of Karl Jay Shapiro, Edited. (Texas Review Press, 2008).