What do you think?
Rate this book
Rock Harbor
A masterful new collection by one of our most important contemporary lyric poets
Wind as a face gone red with blowing,
oceans whose end is broken stitchery--
swim of sea-dragon, dolphin,
shimmer-and-coil, invitation. . . . You Know
the kind of map I mean. Countries as
distant as they are believable . . .
--from "Halo"
Carl Phillips lyric explorations of longing and devotion, castigation and mercy, are unrivaled in contemporary poetry.
Here, in his sixth book, Phillips visits those spaces, both physical and psychological, where risk and safety coincide, and considers what it might mean to live at the nexus of the two. Sifting among the upturned evidence of crisis, from Roman Empire to westward expansion, from the turn of a lover's face to the harbor of the book's title--a place of calm fashioned of the very rock that can mean disaster--these poems negotiate and map out the impulse toward rescue and away from it. Phillips's pooling, cascading lines are the unsuppressed routes across his unique poetic landscape, daring and seductive in their readiness to drift and reverse as the terrain demands.
Wind as a face gone red with blowing,
oceans whose end is broken stitchery--
swim of sea-dragon, dolphin,
shimmer-and-coil, invitation. . . . You Know
the kind of map I mean. Countries as
distant as they are believable . . .
--from "Halo"
Carl Phillips lyric explorations of longing and devotion, castigation and mercy, are unrivaled in contemporary poetry.
Here, in his sixth book, Phillips visits those spaces, both physical and psychological, where risk and safety coincide, and considers what it might mean to live at the nexus of the two. Sifting among the upturned evidence of crisis, from Roman Empire to westward expansion, from the turn of a lover's face to the harbor of the book's title--a place of calm fashioned of the very rock that can mean disaster--these poems negotiate and map out the impulse toward rescue and away from it. Phillips's pooling, cascading lines are the unsuppressed routes across his unique poetic landscape, daring and seductive in their readiness to drift and reverse as the terrain demands.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2002
About the author
Carl Phillips
90 books217 followersCarl Phillips is the highly acclaimed author of 10 collections of poetry.
He was born in 1959 to an Air Force family, who moved regularly throughout his childhood, until finally settling in his high-school years at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He holds degrees from Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Boston University and taught high-school Latin for eight years.
His first book, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and was heralded as the work of an outstanding newcomer in the field of contemporary poetry. His other books are Cortège (1995), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry; From the Devotions (1998), a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; Pastoral (2000), winner of the Lambda Literary Award; The Tether, (2001), winner of the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Rock Harbor (2002); The Rest of Love: Poems, a 2004 National Book Award finalist, for which Phillips also won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry; Riding Westward (2006); Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006 (2007); and Speak Low (2009), a 2009 National Book Award finalist. Two additional titles were published in the 2003-04 academic year: a translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes came out in September 2003, and a book of essays, Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry, was published in May 2004. Phillips is the recipient of, among others, a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Foundation Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review, as well as in anthologies, including eight times in the Best American Poetry series, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, and The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poets. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. He is a Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program.
He was born in 1959 to an Air Force family, who moved regularly throughout his childhood, until finally settling in his high-school years at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He holds degrees from Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Boston University and taught high-school Latin for eight years.
His first book, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and was heralded as the work of an outstanding newcomer in the field of contemporary poetry. His other books are Cortège (1995), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry; From the Devotions (1998), a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; Pastoral (2000), winner of the Lambda Literary Award; The Tether, (2001), winner of the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Rock Harbor (2002); The Rest of Love: Poems, a 2004 National Book Award finalist, for which Phillips also won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry; Riding Westward (2006); Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006 (2007); and Speak Low (2009), a 2009 National Book Award finalist. Two additional titles were published in the 2003-04 academic year: a translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes came out in September 2003, and a book of essays, Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry, was published in May 2004. Phillips is the recipient of, among others, a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Foundation Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review, as well as in anthologies, including eight times in the Best American Poetry series, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, and The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poets. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. He is a Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 25, 2022
Every year, for the last many, I spend the last two months of the year reading the jarring remainder of my Goodreads goal in books of poetry. This year, it’s 15. Leave your recommendations here.
This goes nicely with “Charles Mingus Plays the Piano”, and Pim.
This goes nicely with “Charles Mingus Plays the Piano”, and Pim.
December 22, 2016
I think of you
often, especially here,
at the edge of the world or a
part of it, anyway,
by which I mean of course
more, you will have guessed, than
the coast, just now, I
stand on.
*
Friendship, whose literal
translation in the country of
dream is roughly “that which
all love evolves
down to”—
Until to leave, or
try to —and have drowned
trying —becomes refrain,
the one answer each time
to whatever question:
what was the place called?
what was the house like?
what was it we did inside it?
how is it possible that it cannot be enough to have given
up to you now the dream as — for a time, remember — I did give
my truest self? why won’t you take it —if a gift, if yours?
often, especially here,
at the edge of the world or a
part of it, anyway,
by which I mean of course
more, you will have guessed, than
the coast, just now, I
stand on.
*
Friendship, whose literal
translation in the country of
dream is roughly “that which
all love evolves
down to”—
Until to leave, or
try to —and have drowned
trying —becomes refrain,
the one answer each time
to whatever question:
what was the place called?
what was the house like?
what was it we did inside it?
how is it possible that it cannot be enough to have given
up to you now the dream as — for a time, remember — I did give
my truest self? why won’t you take it —if a gift, if yours?
December 22, 2023
Great poetry book though I really don’t know what to make of it. The distinction between the different parts does a very good job of progressing slowly which is very different from the progression of the poems themselves. The way that Carl Phillips controls the experience of the reader is by structuring his sentences and lines to create tension between themselves which contributes to pacing and overall understanding, and he does this masterfully.
This is definitely a collection of poetry that I will be coming back to.
This is definitely a collection of poetry that I will be coming back to.
Read
July 16, 2008The more I read it the more I appreciate how well crafted his poems are. Warning: they are very abstract and intangible but they are amazingly tightly written. It is proudly "academic" poetry and may be inaccessible.
September 20, 2020
wow it's so HARD to write about #CarlPhillips' work without sounding pretensious and unambiguous. also because i don't think i completely got what he was trying to say most of the time. but that's just good ol Carl for you. he succeeds in conveying through poetry that which is often wordless and unspeakable, so when somebody asks what this or that poem is about, it's hard to say just one actual thing. is it about "hope"? "love"? "sex"? to simplify his pieces into such generalizing terms is a betrayal.
Phillips' poetry are like naturally-formed rock formations in islands where a volcano might have erupted hundreds of years ago, or one that just reemerged from under the sea. you don't question it, you simply walk ahead through its terrains and feel how it changes your breathing each pace and how your muscles respond to each transformative step.
his poems are disorienting yet oddly familiar because it does not conform to how you read or how you think, but moreso on how you feel. in Filipino we describe strong urges, the unyielding whims of human emotion, as Bugso ng Damdamin. that reminds me so much of Phillips' approach.
read this if you're::
*into meditative poetry
*into poetry in general
don't read this if you::
*are new to poems
*want the classical metaphor-meaning ways of poetry
*an utter fool like me
Phillips' poetry are like naturally-formed rock formations in islands where a volcano might have erupted hundreds of years ago, or one that just reemerged from under the sea. you don't question it, you simply walk ahead through its terrains and feel how it changes your breathing each pace and how your muscles respond to each transformative step.
his poems are disorienting yet oddly familiar because it does not conform to how you read or how you think, but moreso on how you feel. in Filipino we describe strong urges, the unyielding whims of human emotion, as Bugso ng Damdamin. that reminds me so much of Phillips' approach.
read this if you're::
*into meditative poetry
*into poetry in general
don't read this if you::
*are new to poems
*want the classical metaphor-meaning ways of poetry
*an utter fool like me
November 4, 2026
a god advises the two heroes
they should be as
twin lions, feeding -- how
even the flesh of late
slaughter does not
distract them from keeping
each over the other
a guarding eye.
What part of this is love, and
what survival
is never said,
though the difference it makes is
at least that between a lily and, say,
a shield.
-- "Quarter-View, from Nauset"
March 20, 2026
let's all kill ourselves
April 27, 2011
I like how these poems measure time and chart experience. This is a book of philosophical questioning, examining states of being, slowing perception down to living in the moment, with the past behind and the future ahead. From this liminal perspective, Phillips asks, how do we know what to expect, how do we know the effects of our actions, how do we fit in with the world, with time, with history? How do we make art?
Even the shelter of relationships is barbed, as competition, jealousy, and comfort live side by side. And yet this book is a tribute to finding shelter, calm permanence, respite, in love and relationships, as time unfurls unpredictably.
Even the shelter of relationships is barbed, as competition, jealousy, and comfort live side by side. And yet this book is a tribute to finding shelter, calm permanence, respite, in love and relationships, as time unfurls unpredictably.
November 12, 2017
More than anything else, poetry is built to convey the world that's felt but only fleetingly seen, and when it comes to contemporary verse rooted in this interior, you'd be hard pressed to name someone who does it better than Carl Phillips. This collection is crammed with poems that reflect the disorientation and reorientation that happen when we try to pin down a specific feeling in the moment. There's an unshowy honesty at work here that can feel like communing with someone's soul.
March 29, 2009
I sort of lived with this book for a few months, carrying it with me and taking my time with the poems. Which they, in a way, demand. The language is very spare and each word at times is a turn the poem takes. Some of the poems I was not thrilled by, but the last two sections of the book really shine, especially the title poem.
October 8, 2008
Often opaque but always vivid, intense.
"framed by a window, the branches
swim in place, they
seem to. no
wonder struggling gets
so often, at first, mistaken
for wild abandon: a very
likeness."
-from "The Use of Force"
"framed by a window, the branches
swim in place, they
seem to. no
wonder struggling gets
so often, at first, mistaken
for wild abandon: a very
likeness."
-from "The Use of Force"
Read
December 3, 2008I saw Carl Phillips read while I was in college and enjoyed it. His poems read differently on the page, and I don't know if I'd call them enjoyable, but I guess there's something pleasurable in trying to take something apart that's so deliberately, almost laboriously put together.
January 18, 2009
Who wouldn't be attracted to Phillips' complicated speaker, who is both insistent and humbled and desirous all at once. As he makes clear, there is not a method for mapping desire back to a beginning. And so instead he accepts it as well as its consequences.
February 26, 2008
Gritty, splendid explorations for light in the dark shade of abstractions.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews