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Silverchest: Poems
A bracingly beautiful new collection from the author of Double Shadow
"After the afterlife, there's an afterlife."
In Silverchest , his twelfth book, Carl Phillips considers how our fears and excesses, the damage we cause both to others and to ourselves, intentional and not, can lead not only to a kind of wisdom but also to renewal, maybe even joy, if we're willing to commit fully to a life in which "I love you / means what exactly?" In poems shot through with his signature mix of eros, restless energy, and moral scrutiny, Phillips argues for the particular courage it takes to look at the self squarely―not with judgment but with understanding―and extend that self more honestly toward It's a risk, there's a lot to lose, but if it's true that "we'll drown anyway―why not in color?"
"After the afterlife, there's an afterlife."
In Silverchest , his twelfth book, Carl Phillips considers how our fears and excesses, the damage we cause both to others and to ourselves, intentional and not, can lead not only to a kind of wisdom but also to renewal, maybe even joy, if we're willing to commit fully to a life in which "I love you / means what exactly?" In poems shot through with his signature mix of eros, restless energy, and moral scrutiny, Phillips argues for the particular courage it takes to look at the self squarely―not with judgment but with understanding―and extend that self more honestly toward It's a risk, there's a lot to lose, but if it's true that "we'll drown anyway―why not in color?"
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 2, 2013
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353 people want to read
About the author
Carl Phillips
88 books207 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
February 8, 2023
welcome to 202-Queer 🌈✨
50 in February: 13/50
the three star curse is real....
there were some lines/parts that i liked and the language is really pretty but i mostly felt meh about it.
favourite lines:
"When I say I trust you, I mean I’ve considered that you could betray me, which means I know you will"
"some of us fuck and call it making love, for some it’s the other way round"
"I know a man who routinely asks that I humiliate him. It’s sex, and it isn’t—whatever. For him, it’s a need, the way brutality can seem for so long a likely answer, that it becomes the answer—a kindness, even, and I have always been kind, for which reason it goes against my nature to do what he says, but there’s little in nature that won’t, with enough training, change …"
50 in February: 13/50
the three star curse is real....
there were some lines/parts that i liked and the language is really pretty but i mostly felt meh about it.
favourite lines:
"When I say I trust you, I mean I’ve considered that you could betray me, which means I know you will"
"some of us fuck and call it making love, for some it’s the other way round"
"I know a man who routinely asks that I humiliate him. It’s sex, and it isn’t—whatever. For him, it’s a need, the way brutality can seem for so long a likely answer, that it becomes the answer—a kindness, even, and I have always been kind, for which reason it goes against my nature to do what he says, but there’s little in nature that won’t, with enough training, change …"
May 5, 2020
"and didn’t think what to call it, the rest
that came after, what is a thing like that worth calling: he
took me into his arms? he held me? I know longing’s
a lot like despair: both can equal everything you’ve ever
hoped for, if that’s how you want it—sure, I get that. What’s
wrong with me, I used to ask, but usually too late, and not
meaning it anyway. He touches me, or I touch him, or don’t."
that came after, what is a thing like that worth calling: he
took me into his arms? he held me? I know longing’s
a lot like despair: both can equal everything you’ve ever
hoped for, if that’s how you want it—sure, I get that. What’s
wrong with me, I used to ask, but usually too late, and not
meaning it anyway. He touches me, or I touch him, or don’t."
February 12, 2015
Exasperatingly abstruse. Many of the poems are love poems but dark, dark. Difficult poetry. I felt as though I was reading under a densely and oppressively overcast sky.
October 4, 2021
Excellent. Unfortch I’m in a ‘i should just kill myself’ kinda mood, so like, nothing is slapping for me rn.
April 20, 2013
Complex and compelling; it's often hard to tell whether the poet is addressing the perilous, piteous human condition or his own current erotic encounter -- which is the point, after all.
August 29, 2023
carl phillips is a genius
July 23, 2013
I was going to say that "so what?" is the question of this book—it appears twice in "Blizzard" and again in "Your Body Down in Gold", and I do think there's something to that. Phillips, in these poems, is concerned with what matters and what doesn't, with the vagaries of love and desire, with the things people say and the things people mean, and with the everyday world, the natural world as well as the human, the world of starlings and cottonwood trees and crepe myrtles. The poems themselves are an answer to "so what?": so here we are, so here we are in this world, so let's pay attention.
But actually, these poems are full of questions, not just that one: in 35 poems I counted 29 questions, and that's not even counting the ones not phrased with question marks, like this, from "Shimmer": "When did souvenirs of what happened start/becoming tokens of what/could have been becomes/one of those questions that, more and more, I keep/forgetting to stop asking." Some of the questions are succinct: "Has it come to this again/already?" or "I love you/means what, exactly?" or "why do we love, at all?", while others meander and sprawl, like this stanza-and-a-bit from "Distraction":
"You know how, when the light
flashes off water, then passes through it, then rubs against,
it can seem just like the mind in a fix thinking its way
out of a fix, or at least trying to, the way Virgil in his
big poem describes it, and for a moment you think
everything's new that's been known forever—swamp-thistle,
bull-thistle, touch-me-not, red clover?"
I like how many questions there are, and I like the uncertainty or ambivalence that Phillips captures in other ways, too: there are multiple poems in which something is or isn't, or happens or doesn't, or is and isn't. In his review of Silverchest in the April 15, 2013 issue of the New Yorker, Dan Chiasson writes of these poems as Phillips's way of "tracking the heart's false starts, close shaves, and dead ends," and I think that a major way Phillips does that is through the language: the questions and ambivalence and ambiguity that I like so much.
If you're curious to read more, several of the poems are available online in one form or another. You can watch/listen to Phillips reading the book's first poem, "Just the Wind for a Sound, Softly," here: I really like the mix of concrete and oblique, and the sense of time passing: a season, many seasons. I like "Bluegrass" for the crispness of the image of the second stanza and the conversational tone of the first. And I already linked to "Blizzard" but here it is again: I love the lines about the starlings and their shadows on a frozen pond, and also the last ten lines, which are a translation of/variation on a poem attributed to the Roman emperor Hadrian.
But actually, these poems are full of questions, not just that one: in 35 poems I counted 29 questions, and that's not even counting the ones not phrased with question marks, like this, from "Shimmer": "When did souvenirs of what happened start/becoming tokens of what/could have been becomes/one of those questions that, more and more, I keep/forgetting to stop asking." Some of the questions are succinct: "Has it come to this again/already?" or "I love you/means what, exactly?" or "why do we love, at all?", while others meander and sprawl, like this stanza-and-a-bit from "Distraction":
"You know how, when the light
flashes off water, then passes through it, then rubs against,
it can seem just like the mind in a fix thinking its way
out of a fix, or at least trying to, the way Virgil in his
big poem describes it, and for a moment you think
everything's new that's been known forever—swamp-thistle,
bull-thistle, touch-me-not, red clover?"
I like how many questions there are, and I like the uncertainty or ambivalence that Phillips captures in other ways, too: there are multiple poems in which something is or isn't, or happens or doesn't, or is and isn't. In his review of Silverchest in the April 15, 2013 issue of the New Yorker, Dan Chiasson writes of these poems as Phillips's way of "tracking the heart's false starts, close shaves, and dead ends," and I think that a major way Phillips does that is through the language: the questions and ambivalence and ambiguity that I like so much.
If you're curious to read more, several of the poems are available online in one form or another. You can watch/listen to Phillips reading the book's first poem, "Just the Wind for a Sound, Softly," here: I really like the mix of concrete and oblique, and the sense of time passing: a season, many seasons. I like "Bluegrass" for the crispness of the image of the second stanza and the conversational tone of the first. And I already linked to "Blizzard" but here it is again: I love the lines about the starlings and their shadows on a frozen pond, and also the last ten lines, which are a translation of/variation on a poem attributed to the Roman emperor Hadrian.
March 15, 2021
Carl Phillipsʼ Silverchest drives away from the established conventions of contemporary American poetry, which makes his collection singularly remarkable to detail the erotic experiences of an individual not ultimately describing it, nor ornamentalizing it to give the readers an avant-garde notion—in spite Phillips is an unique American poet, whose skills are best in the fullness of the sentence in spite the brevity of his story.
How mundane we may be in our desires, dissatisfaction, and destruction, Phillips knew that to describe all of these as is and go typically structured will leave him washed away from the canon: obvious and unnecessary. What makes him otherwise then? See in “Flight of Doves” how he speaks for himself yet he alleviates his narration to a striking metaphor:
“I have been the king for whom the loveliest beasts
were slaughtered and turned trophy.”
That first sentence alone signify the animal nature of man, where he points how “brutality becomes merely a rhythm”. The irony comes in many facet, a contradiction among the verses as how come brutality, so incoherent and wild in the process, becomes a rhythm? This is what makes his metaphor thrown striking: “loveliest beasts,” he said, and after that powerful poem of sex, we will witness the erotic comes silently like a love held sincerely:
“I brush the snow from his hair, as I take him, in my arms.”
In light of his imagery, rarely does Philips give a full hint of what is happening. Aside from metaphors and irony, the poet gives a cinematic narrative that makes his poems endearing. Rare are these kinds of poet who makes an image run after another image, word after word going verbal, virtuous—cinematic.
“Sometimes it feels like a carousel horse, but
with all the paint gone strange-like, all the wood gone
driftwood, all the horses Iʼve coralled inside me set free,”
Akin to music videos not for commercial purposes, but rather for true cinematic experience, the poems of Phillips may be short, secretive in literary device, ambigous in metaphors, and mostly in one angle—the fullness of Eros is achieved. The triumph is the emotions of a wordsmith that traversed through the poems. He is not sentimental, not overtly passionate either, and does not flaunts, but rather purely linguistic only, detailing how he maps the mind first and not the heart—he shows how in music like love, we can be attached then detached again. And there is beauty of going under and not being shown.
POST-SCRIPT: “Bow, And Arrow” is the poem I considered the most powerful. The clarity of the words, the allegorical essence like a music video indeed. The short poem is not purely lyric, not Imagist, yet no exaggeration in narration, but in reading it eclipses me in two comprehended scenario, and from the complexity comes a vividness. Where am I? I felt violated but also healing—how? Why? Is “Bow” he was referring a verb or a noun? Is this a gentle aftermath of love, or a strong juxtaposition of war to the present? Philips achieved such poem that it invalidates you in a good way.
How mundane we may be in our desires, dissatisfaction, and destruction, Phillips knew that to describe all of these as is and go typically structured will leave him washed away from the canon: obvious and unnecessary. What makes him otherwise then? See in “Flight of Doves” how he speaks for himself yet he alleviates his narration to a striking metaphor:
“I have been the king for whom the loveliest beasts
were slaughtered and turned trophy.”
That first sentence alone signify the animal nature of man, where he points how “brutality becomes merely a rhythm”. The irony comes in many facet, a contradiction among the verses as how come brutality, so incoherent and wild in the process, becomes a rhythm? This is what makes his metaphor thrown striking: “loveliest beasts,” he said, and after that powerful poem of sex, we will witness the erotic comes silently like a love held sincerely:
“I brush the snow from his hair, as I take him, in my arms.”
In light of his imagery, rarely does Philips give a full hint of what is happening. Aside from metaphors and irony, the poet gives a cinematic narrative that makes his poems endearing. Rare are these kinds of poet who makes an image run after another image, word after word going verbal, virtuous—cinematic.
“Sometimes it feels like a carousel horse, but
with all the paint gone strange-like, all the wood gone
driftwood, all the horses Iʼve coralled inside me set free,”
Akin to music videos not for commercial purposes, but rather for true cinematic experience, the poems of Phillips may be short, secretive in literary device, ambigous in metaphors, and mostly in one angle—the fullness of Eros is achieved. The triumph is the emotions of a wordsmith that traversed through the poems. He is not sentimental, not overtly passionate either, and does not flaunts, but rather purely linguistic only, detailing how he maps the mind first and not the heart—he shows how in music like love, we can be attached then detached again. And there is beauty of going under and not being shown.
POST-SCRIPT: “Bow, And Arrow” is the poem I considered the most powerful. The clarity of the words, the allegorical essence like a music video indeed. The short poem is not purely lyric, not Imagist, yet no exaggeration in narration, but in reading it eclipses me in two comprehended scenario, and from the complexity comes a vividness. Where am I? I felt violated but also healing—how? Why? Is “Bow” he was referring a verb or a noun? Is this a gentle aftermath of love, or a strong juxtaposition of war to the present? Philips achieved such poem that it invalidates you in a good way.
August 17, 2014
Poems are inherently reflective but Carl Phillips "Silverchest" feels even more so as it looks back at life from the vantage point of a middle-aged, gay black man. You get a feel for the wear and tear of the journey, the worldweariness of someone who's been there, done that, and in some ways is still doing it and in even more ways, is still being there. Fully living in it -- even when it's shit -- saves "Silverchest" from being depressing, especially in the masterful poem "In this Light" which encapsulates the futility of it all.
April 19, 2022
The poems in Silverchest are elliptical and abstracted, hard to pin down, but their unique language and tone elicit profoundly real emotional truths in a way that other styles of poetry could never hope for. The poems lend themselves to different and multiple readings, which necessarily reflects the universal ambiguities of a world rife with undefined love, shifting identities, meaningless pain, and painful meaning.
Throughout, Carl Phillips uses images of nature to confront the unstable boundaries of queer love and personal identity. It is profoundly beautiful verse. Some lines about queer love are temptingly quotable, even tattooable: " - some of us fuck and call it making love, for some it's the other way around" (Snow Globe); "Do what you must, but softly, soft as rain just beginning to turn to snow at the cusp of winter.-Don't worry. This too is love." (Slow Globe); "I love you means what exactly? In the end, desire may turn out to be no difference from any other song - sing, and be at last released from it." (So the Mind Like a Gate Swings Open); "he moves less like a sawn - black, or otherwise - than like any man for whom sex is, or has at last become, an added sense by which to pass ungently but more entirely across a life where, between the sliences, he leaves what litte he's got to show for himself behind him in braids of water, green-to-blue wake of Please and Don't hurt me and You can see I'm hurt, already." (Black Swan on Water, in a Little Rain";
Within this collection is also a courageous exploration and acceptance of self and its relation to others. Some quotes: "When I say I trust you, I mean I've considered that you could betray me, which means I know you will, that we'll have between us at last that understanding which is a safer thing than trust, not worse, not a better thing..." (Blizzard); "Our ambitions were very high; on occasion, we fell from them-swiftly, without surprise, and very far. Never, though, never would we have called that failure, no-not then, and not now either. For here we are." (Interior: All the Leaves Shake Off Their Light); "Deep from within the changing colors of a life that itself keeps changing, I know the leaves prove nothing - though it does seem otherwise - about how helplessness is not a luxury, not a hurt by now worth all the struggling to take back, but instead what we each, inevitably, stumble sometimes into, and sometimes through..." (Undo It); "About nostalgia, I am still against it ... Why should your requirements change from what they've always been? Stay as blind as ever to the particular form of failure that is still nostalgia. Turn his face away. Let memory be the only piece of evidence that you hold on to." (Snow Globe).
Throughout, Carl Phillips uses images of nature to confront the unstable boundaries of queer love and personal identity. It is profoundly beautiful verse. Some lines about queer love are temptingly quotable, even tattooable: " - some of us fuck and call it making love, for some it's the other way around" (Snow Globe); "Do what you must, but softly, soft as rain just beginning to turn to snow at the cusp of winter.-Don't worry. This too is love." (Slow Globe); "I love you means what exactly? In the end, desire may turn out to be no difference from any other song - sing, and be at last released from it." (So the Mind Like a Gate Swings Open); "he moves less like a sawn - black, or otherwise - than like any man for whom sex is, or has at last become, an added sense by which to pass ungently but more entirely across a life where, between the sliences, he leaves what litte he's got to show for himself behind him in braids of water, green-to-blue wake of Please and Don't hurt me and You can see I'm hurt, already." (Black Swan on Water, in a Little Rain";
Within this collection is also a courageous exploration and acceptance of self and its relation to others. Some quotes: "When I say I trust you, I mean I've considered that you could betray me, which means I know you will, that we'll have between us at last that understanding which is a safer thing than trust, not worse, not a better thing..." (Blizzard); "Our ambitions were very high; on occasion, we fell from them-swiftly, without surprise, and very far. Never, though, never would we have called that failure, no-not then, and not now either. For here we are." (Interior: All the Leaves Shake Off Their Light); "Deep from within the changing colors of a life that itself keeps changing, I know the leaves prove nothing - though it does seem otherwise - about how helplessness is not a luxury, not a hurt by now worth all the struggling to take back, but instead what we each, inevitably, stumble sometimes into, and sometimes through..." (Undo It); "About nostalgia, I am still against it ... Why should your requirements change from what they've always been? Stay as blind as ever to the particular form of failure that is still nostalgia. Turn his face away. Let memory be the only piece of evidence that you hold on to." (Snow Globe).
June 13, 2017
I checked this book out after being stunned by a Carl Phillips poem in the Poem-a-Day series from Poets.org. The collection is full of sentence construction that reveals it’s construct. Sometimes overdone, but still beautiful. Not the poetry that makes me scream every time about language and living, but worth the read.
I did feel better about writing “nature” poems after this. Phillips poems are nothing like Robert Frost, but Phillips also serves as a reminder that we can write about the human experience, regardless of the subject.
“Look how the jetty shines in the sun, for nothing.” (7)
A poem that slayed me:
“A boy walks out into a grayish distance, and he never comes back.
Anger confusable with sorrow, sorrow canceling all the anger out…
It’s the past, and it isn’t. It’s forever. And it isn’t. The way, in hell,
the flickering’s what they say what’s left of the light does—a comfort,
maybe, and maybe not. Sometimes by innocence I think I’ve meant
the innocence of carnivores, raised in the wild, for whom the killing
is sportless, clean, unmetaphysical—then I’m not so sure. Steeplebush
flourished by some other name, lost now, long before there were
steeples. I think we ruin or we save ourselves. Comes a day when
the god, what at least you’ve called a god, takes you not from behind,
the usual, but pins you instead, his ass on your chest, his cock in your
face, his mouth twisting open, saying Lick my balls, and because you
want to live, in spite of everything, you do what he says, heaven and
earth, some rain, a few stars appearing, harder, the way he tells you to,
then not so hard, a tenderness like no tenderness you’ve ever shown.”
from “Neon” (24)
I did feel better about writing “nature” poems after this. Phillips poems are nothing like Robert Frost, but Phillips also serves as a reminder that we can write about the human experience, regardless of the subject.
“Look how the jetty shines in the sun, for nothing.” (7)
A poem that slayed me:
“A boy walks out into a grayish distance, and he never comes back.
Anger confusable with sorrow, sorrow canceling all the anger out…
It’s the past, and it isn’t. It’s forever. And it isn’t. The way, in hell,
the flickering’s what they say what’s left of the light does—a comfort,
maybe, and maybe not. Sometimes by innocence I think I’ve meant
the innocence of carnivores, raised in the wild, for whom the killing
is sportless, clean, unmetaphysical—then I’m not so sure. Steeplebush
flourished by some other name, lost now, long before there were
steeples. I think we ruin or we save ourselves. Comes a day when
the god, what at least you’ve called a god, takes you not from behind,
the usual, but pins you instead, his ass on your chest, his cock in your
face, his mouth twisting open, saying Lick my balls, and because you
want to live, in spite of everything, you do what he says, heaven and
earth, some rain, a few stars appearing, harder, the way he tells you to,
then not so hard, a tenderness like no tenderness you’ve ever shown.”
from “Neon” (24)
September 30, 2018
This shares many simple beauties with the other book I read by Phillips--his newer "Wild is the Wind." Both collections both employ everyday language, mostly, but sometimes not, and tentative peeking-out phrases like this sentence. But "Wild is the Wind" takes poetic ambiguity to another level, introducing more abstraction and mystery. Silverchest is more direct and more understandable, which some people will like. I enjoyed both books. Silverchest does have more of a theme: it returns to gay male relationships over and over. Nature (particularly winter scenes) is another theme.
December 8, 2016
Phillips is certainly a master of the sentence. Sometimes, his syntax felt so constructed and careful that the artifice of this deliberation overwhelmed the poem's content. Still, beautiful, moving, and certainly a great primer from which to explore the possibilities of line and stanza.
September 26, 2021
This is maybe the best Carl Phillips collection I've read yet in that these poems felt like they could have been a secret conversation about my failures and longings, between me and my very own heart.
October 12, 2021
this requires rereads. preferably at different points in life, when i most need forgiveness or to acknowledge there will be damage and there will be life after. when there is need for honestly and reflection and magnanimity.
August 12, 2023
(4.5)
Let memory be
the only piece of evidence that you hold on to. Not leaves,
but—what is no less real—the ghosts of leaves. Do
what you must, but softly, soft as rain just beginning to turn to snow
at the cusp of winter. —Don’t worry. This too is love.
Let memory be
the only piece of evidence that you hold on to. Not leaves,
but—what is no less real—the ghosts of leaves. Do
what you must, but softly, soft as rain just beginning to turn to snow
at the cusp of winter. —Don’t worry. This too is love.
April 16, 2018
I really enjoyed reading these poems. The poet has a clear signature style, with flowing lines and wonderful imagery.
May 11, 2019
Wow! Two carl phillips in one year. What an intense book. Full of sexual longing and the dynamics of tenderness, vulnerability, and damage.
March 28, 2021
The language is beautiful but the topic doesn’t resonate with me strongly.
June 16, 2022
Beautiful !!!
January 19, 2024
I found some poems here were a lil bit difficult to be understood, but you could barely feel it, in every word
December 8, 2024
3.5
“Do
what you must, but softly, soft as rain just beginning to turn to snow
at the cusp of winter. —Don’t worry. This too is love.”
“Do
what you must, but softly, soft as rain just beginning to turn to snow
at the cusp of winter. —Don’t worry. This too is love.”
May 20, 2013
Phillips continues themes he started to explore in earlier collections - issues of power, sex, the human condition and his own - in this new collection. The work, as usual, is beautiful in its construction and language, so carefully built that only the essentials remain. The subject matter, which is explored more frankly in this book than in earlier collections, does begin to feel repetitious, and as a reader who has read all of his work, I believe he's more than capable of expanding his vision, his position as a writer/narrator, than this book demonstrates. Again, the work is beautiful, but part of me wants to say, we get it, we know what you're talking about, it's okay to move on to new subject matter.
November 5, 2013
A sorrowful collection of prose poems. I liked several poems at the center of the collection best: My Meadow, My Twilight, & Black Swan on Water, & Undo It, & Blizzard, & Interior: All the leaves shake off their light.
On Sorrow: "Maybe joy is a kind of spindrift -/ Spinning, drifting, - on a sea of sorrow," from And Other Animals. (pg 4)
And in the middle of But Waves, They Scatter (pg55) the poem personifies longing but is broken by this passage: "Tragedies are/ happening everywhere in the world, besides things that aren't / technically tragedies, though they include suffering, pain, death/ in it's more humiliating versions, to remind that some of us/ will be less spared, some will not."
On Sorrow: "Maybe joy is a kind of spindrift -/ Spinning, drifting, - on a sea of sorrow," from And Other Animals. (pg 4)
And in the middle of But Waves, They Scatter (pg55) the poem personifies longing but is broken by this passage: "Tragedies are/ happening everywhere in the world, besides things that aren't / technically tragedies, though they include suffering, pain, death/ in it's more humiliating versions, to remind that some of us/ will be less spared, some will not."
September 4, 2013
An intimate look at how we perceive the life stretching behind us, before us, this collection has a quiet resolve that asks how we can be certain of anything.
The overarching dichotomies of light & shadow, harshness & tenderness, betrayal & trust, pool together to create a subtle sketching of the idea that it is only when we accept that doubt can be a kind of understanding that we can trust.
The simplistic beauty of Phillips’s phrase juxtaposed with the complexity of his thought keeps this humming long after the last page.
The overarching dichotomies of light & shadow, harshness & tenderness, betrayal & trust, pool together to create a subtle sketching of the idea that it is only when we accept that doubt can be a kind of understanding that we can trust.
The simplistic beauty of Phillips’s phrase juxtaposed with the complexity of his thought keeps this humming long after the last page.
June 25, 2014
I wasn't very far into reading this collection when I felt I was reading a gay man's poetry. His words at times are haunting and melancholy. Several stood out in my mind worth sharing with my poetry group:
"Your Body Down in Gold", "But Waves, They Scatter", and "Silverchest"--the last poem and also the title.
What drew me to check out this book was the inside cover synopsis "....if we're willing to commit fully to a life in which "I love you/means what, exactly".....
This is his twelfth book and I think will try some of his earlier work before formulating a more solid opinion.
"Your Body Down in Gold", "But Waves, They Scatter", and "Silverchest"--the last poem and also the title.
What drew me to check out this book was the inside cover synopsis "....if we're willing to commit fully to a life in which "I love you/means what, exactly".....
This is his twelfth book and I think will try some of his earlier work before formulating a more solid opinion.
October 10, 2013
This book started off stroong and then faded for me. I suspect that it might be the writing style. To me it didn't seem very focused. I don't think I've ever read anything by Phillips before although this is his twelfth book of poetry. There are many different poetry writing styles, more than prose, and I connect with some better than others. This one seemed a littl out of reach for me. I may need to read it twice.
September 3, 2014
"...Stay as blind as/ever to the particular form of failure that is/still nostalgia. Turn his face away. Let memory be/the only piece of evidence that you hold on to. Not leaves,/but--what is no less real--the ghosts of leaves. Do/what you must, but softly, soft as rain just beginning to turn to snow/at the cusp of winter.--Don't worry. This too is love."
October 25, 2013
I wasn't too far into the collection when I felt I was reading a gay man's poetry. It wasn't only the sexual references,which tend toward a submissive posturing in life and sex. I will buy more poetry, then come back to this entry for a possible follow up.
June 4, 2013
A bit too inscrutable for me.
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