The Art of Daring: Risk, Restlessness, Imagination

by Carl Phillips

The award-winning poet Carl Phillips's invaluable essays on poetry, the tenth volume in the celebrated Art of series of books on the craft of writing

In seven insightful essays, Carl Phillips meditates on the craft of poetry, its capacity for making a space for possibility and inquiry. What does it mean to give shapelessness a form? How can a poem explore both the natural world and the inner world? Phillips demonstrates the restless qualities of the imagination by reading and examining poems by Ashbery, Bogan, Frost, Niedecker, Shakespeare, and others, and by considering other art forms, such as photography and the blues. The Art of Daring is a lyrical, persuasive argument for the many ways that writing and living are acts of risk. "I think it's largely the conundrum of being human that makes us keep making," Phillips writes. "I think it has something to do with revision―how, not only is the world in constant revision, but each of us is, as well."

Genres: Poetry, Writing, Nonfiction, Essays, Crafts, Criticism, Queer

136 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2014

About the author

Carl 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.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Art of Daring was the most accessible of the books that I have read from "The Art of ..." series (from Greywolf) and it was interesting although less immediately helpful in terms of reading or writing poetry.

Phillips shares his beliefs about the necessity of risk in being an artist, a risk lived out not only on the page but in life. I found myself arguing passionately with what was written: always a sign that I am deeply engaged. Is promiscuity a necessary part of risk-taking in life? And if I grant that restlessness is a major part of creating, of being compelled to engage with the more troubling aspects of life, does that restlessness, again, mean acting in a way I perceive as self-destructive? Can an artist lead a life outwardly quiet, devoid even of notable event but passionately alive in her art?

These essays reflect Phillips' exploration of what daring has meant to him, in his own life and art. He is almost ruthlessly honest, and, can I say, "daring" in how he shares how he has lived this out in his art - and in his life.

The essays are thought-provoking. There is much to consider in them about the role of restlessness and risk in our own lives, whether or not we are artists.

[salva · Rating 5 out of 5]

carl phillips, my love, my guiding light

[Kasandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very engaging work, I dog-eared and highlighted many passages: ideas and wisdom that resonate throughout. I also found myself arguing with Phillips here and there, about restlessness and risk, which I found valuable - I wholeheartedly agree that to grow as an artist takes both, but in what measure? That's part of what he confronts here. He reminds poets that their art is meant to "disturb assumptions", "resist closure", and engage with uncertainty instead of always feeling a need to resolve it. Those are suggestions I need to return to, as my own work has suffered from feeling a need to be "neat and clean", accessible, understandable, a fear, if you will, of not communicating clearly which has often left out space for mystery and uncertainty. The only way in is to begin - but I feel this small book is a wonderful guide. The first half resonated with me more than the second, but I enjoyed all of it and recommend it to all poets (and writers eager to understand poetry a little better, or those who realize the need for introducing more risk and mystery into their work, regardless of genre).

[Grete · Rating 2 out of 5]

Phillips calls this little book an essay; it strikes me as more of a meditation. Very much the work of a man who writes more often in short, poetic forms - disjointed, abrupt, evocative, with many parenthetical thoughts. I found it difficult to read, as a result, except where he went into critical mode, explicating poems. There he shines, especially in highlighting the multivalency and polysemy of resonant poems. He manages to avoid the density and tedium critics often fall into when offering line-by-line analysis. Phillips is also a great asker of questions. These beautiful questions and insightful close readings saved the book for me.

[Scott Wiggerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like other books in this series, this one is totally engaging at times, less so at others. The basic premise is to take more risks in poetry (and perhaps in life), that that is the only way to grow. Not quite as practical as some of the other books in the series that are more craft-focused.

[Kendrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the realm of American contemporary poetry, it's hard not to think of Carl Phillips, who stands toe to toe with Mark Doty and Louise Gluck for their numerous accomplishments and accolades. Phillips's writing, in particular, is quite singular. It's easy to find imitators of his style - spare, strange, surprising - but very few come close to resembling his voice.

The Art of Daring is Phillips's entry to the Graywolf series, "The Art Of...", where accomplished writers speak about the particularities of poetic craft. Phillips's contribution keeps in line with the series, featuring close analysis of individual poems such as Thom Gunn's "My Sad Captains" and Louise Bogan's "Night" which in turn feeds into greater questions about poetic surprise and success.

Phillips's essays are grounded in his poetics. His first essay, "Little Gods of Making", breaks down poetry to consider the elements of tension that animate narrative, as well as resonance: the way in which these elements rise beyond mere description to speak to a greater meaning. When I read this essay, I see how his poetry operates on the level of tension and resonance, distorting the original impulse or scene to leave behind only the emotional aftermath. As Phillips notes, the way he views a thunderstorm deviates from his partner:

Turning to Doug, I say, “I think what attracts me to storms is the way they reduce form to formlessness. Or no, that’s not it. A storm revises a thing’s original form. It isn’t formlessness, it’s revision.”

To all of which, Doug answers by saying, “There’s nothing better than a great storm.” He’s a photographer, a landscape photographer, the kind whose instinct is to see the world first for what it is, not for what it may conjure up in the mind. Clarity of vision, not distortion of it. This is not to say that he isn’t capable of seeing the various other resonances of a landscape, but that comes later, I think. I’m the kind of poet who thinks in the opposite manner, tending to see first what a thing resembles, and only afterward—almost reluctantly—do I see it for what it actually is.

Are all the essays of this book as exciting and informative? Not all. Nor is Phillips's style of writing always the clearest. But there are enough -- such as "Beautiful Dreamer", "Heaven and Earth", and "Foilage" -- which are honest and insightful in the ways they offer frameworks to craft a poem. I enjoyed this read.

[BookChampions · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fitting book for this moment--hell, for any moment. Aren't we all, too, faced every day with that question, "Do I dare?" Do I dare be myself? Do I dare open my mouth and speak? Do I dare, O Eliot, disturb the universe?

Carl Phillips has written something I'd recommend to all writers, teachers, and lovers of poetry. There are some brilliant explications of some wonderful poems (but please hone in the examination of Muriel Rukeyer 😍), and Carl demystifies that assumed-difficult process of making sense of poems. But honestly this book is more about how poetry--both reading and writing it--can help us face the unresolved dilemmas of our identities.

I shall say no more (and I really could) and leave you with my 3 favourite lines from this book of essays to entice you:

"I think it's largely the conundrum of being human that makes us keep making. I think it has something to do with revision-- how, not only is the world in constant revision, but each of us is, as well. Each new experience at some level becomes a part of the lens through which we see-- as in understand-- the world we pass through." (31)

"I think I write not to understand struggle and somehow by understanding it come to a sort of peace with it, but to understand just enough to know how much more there is, still, to be understood; not an end, then, to struggling, but a stepping more deeply into it." (69)

"One risk, I suppose, is of losing the control that has always been part of my sensibility; another, that I won't be understood, or I'll somehow be judged. By the risk of daring is that I'll fail to have been entirely myself-- the risk of not daring, you might say, is artifice, inauthenticity. " (122)

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated this book more than I thought I would. The author is not a poet I relate to, but he talks about his process of writing poetry in this book. I understand more why his poems take the form they do. I also enjoyed the poems and poets referred to in the text. There are a few new names I will be looking into.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not so much about craft directly as it is about attitude or approach to writing (poetry or anything else, I think) and life. The book sagged a bit in the middle for me, but the first couple of chapters pulled me in, and the last two sections were brilliant—very personal, sometimes very uncomfortable, but rich in meaning. I want to go back and read the last two sections again before I take this back to the library.

Also the book introduced various poems and poets that I want to to look up, and I'd like to read more of Phillips's poetry. Always a good thing to add to my list of interesting poets.

[Milton Brasher-Cunningham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Restless is a good way to describe the tone of this book. The first half has some helpful challenges, but I thought the restlessness got the best of the author in the second half and it was harder to follow. As will all of this series, it was worth the read.

[Beatrix Delcarmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“This taking in of the world is a kind of loving. A sustenance. Never mind that it will not save us.”

In this book, Carl Phillips speaks about what drives a poet to make poems, by closely examining poems important to him, drawing from his own experiences and artistic practices, and invoking the voices of friends and other artists. His seven essays are structured in three movements titled “Restlessness”, “Penetration” and “Daring”. He speaks about the human impulse to give form to formlessness, and how this drives poets to write poems. The act of writing is a way someone deals with uncertainty, by writing towards closure. He notes the presence of tension in all poems, as a way to illustrate this desire for closure. He uses formal qualities in poems as examples to show this tension. He argues that all successful poems end with resisting this closure. He illustrates this by engaging with different formal qualities, for example the Shakespearean sonnet as a “fixed” structure, and what he dubs the blues strophe, as a structure characterized by its tone. He speaks about the process of revision as a way that poets deal with the unsolvability aspect of writing. This transitions into his idea of restlessness as the momentum that keeps a poet creating. He argues that poems are a result of restlessness of imagination. This restlessness haunts artists and is related to sexual restlessness, which is an undercurrent of his book. He also introduces risk as a consequence of restlessness. By wrestling with normalcy so much and then offering a critique or solution is risky. Phillips also believes that all poems are an act of love, because to grapple with the uncertainty of the world so much as to offer this glimmer of it, is to fundamentally love the world. He speaks to how he views his personal history of risk that he has taken in writing, and which was not intentional. This is distinct from daring, which implies some knowledge that one ignores, which makes it risky. Over time, it becomes harder to dare, because with more knowledge there is less of an innate risk taking. It must become conscious.

The moments that stood out for me the most in the collection of essays, was the point that we live in a world of supposed “fixedness”, but this often does not line up with how we feel navigating the world. Words create closure for things that are not closed. This restlessness is the answer to that constant questioning. Poets who keep writing are never satisfied. The philosophies that Philipps illustrates center around the continuation of art-making, in the context of poetry. He intends to cover a lot of philosophical ideas and successfully uses a variety of poems to illustrate the ways poets contend with restlessness, and further how they keep pushing themselves into daring spaces. What struck me, was the way these essays were grounded in Phillip’s experience as a writer coupled with the parallel experience of coming into his homosexuality. Queerness has generally been a space of daring in American culture. Further, a point of struggle for people contending with their identity. This is how art-making serves as a practice for healing, because the artist works through these questions. Therefore using sex as a gaze for poetic yearning, and all the different emotive momentums that Philipps encounters, works effectively.

[Caroliena Cabada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this while Elle Woods-ing it on an elliptical, so my reading might not be the most in-depth. Overall, reading this book made me want to write more (and more daring) poetry, which is my top criterion for craft books. Does this book make me want to write? Then it's doing its job as a craft book.

Beyond that, the book also made me think about my own views of the connections between risk and (specifically) sexual desire. In the final essay of the book, Phillips links the two, saying that he "used to think promiscuity was one of the more resonant manifestations of transgression," but then in the next section poses the question: "To put intimacy at risk, to put the body at risk—is this daring?" I'm not one to share too many personal details, but in a way this book is just as much about coming to terms with sexuality as it is about writing.

I will admit that I was a bit skeptical when I saw in the table of contents that one of the sections was called "Penetration," but as a reader I'm still learning how to not let my knee-jerk reactions prevent me from gleaning the fundamental messages of a piece of writing. The section title makes sense in the context of the book.

[Jacob Binder · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mix of poetics, auto-theory, and lyric, Carl Phillips unpacks the philosophy and the practice behind his art. For Phillips, the practice of writing and consuming poetry is a way to process discomforting experiences that resist easy closure or resolution. The purpose of such art, then, is “to transform experience so that our assumption about a given experience can be disturbed and, accordingly, our thinking about that experience might be at once made more complicated, deeper, richer” (19). The point is not to feel better, necessary, but to feel more fully. The Art of Daring is a monument to living a life made richer by art, and in particular the necessary risk and restlessness required to make good art.

[Ajibola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here, Carl Philips writes dauntlessly about poetry as a tool to interrogate personal or communal life. Of course, he brings his personal life to the fore and what it means to him to be gay and how telling his truth had not appeared as though he were daring or confronting anything in particular.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This craft book definitely grew on me as I read it. The weaving together of personal risks with poetic ones worked well for me, as a reader and writer, and the poems Phillips includes are lovely, his discussion of them erudite (as one might expect). Worth sitting with and returning to.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of energizing questions, ways to think about poetry, about life.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on writing / creation / poetry I’ve picked up — why did nobody ever assign this to me in college..

[meg (the.hidden.colophon) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for my Creative Writing course in the Spring of ‘23.

I thought I would like this more than The Art of Description. I was wrong.

Phillips can definitely write, but nonfiction is not his form. I had a hard time getting past his rumination on everything not related to…the art of daring? As a matter of fact, I can’t point out a single time he talks about daring until page 114.

He does talk about sex. A lot.

Read Why Poetry by Zapruder instead of this.

2 stars.

[Miranda Purcell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The inner workings of poetry are so hard I want to know them all

[Mark Peters · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do not recommend.

[Eric Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was assigned this for grad school. This is a very good craft book, that even though focuses on poetry, can also be applied to fiction and creative nonfiction, especially Phillip's discussion of closure in poetry. There are a lot of examples, which are followed by explanations and analysis, some of which can seem a little longwinded if you are not used to poetry (which I am not.) He also talks a bit about shape and form throughout, and it's very interesting to think about from a craft perspective.

[Derrick Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

2 years ago, a poet led a workshop on the "Beautiful Dreamer" section of this book. I picked this book up because he praised it and because I liked what I wrote from it well enough.

I started to write this review thinking I was ambivalent about the book, but as I wrote I realized how much wisdom it contains. Even this paragraph is something I've returned to add upon reflection. More than most, this is a book that invites reflection. I have high praise for this book, if for nothing else than the fact that somewhere around page 70, the themes and content in The Art of Daring pushed me to adopt "don't be safe" as a personal writing mantra. I can't withhold praise or recommendation for something that incites that mentality.

This is the first time since college I've intentionally read a book of poetry criticism. Much of this is a guide towards practice and parts of it are deep explorations of Phillips personal history. Both lovely and welcome. I'm not sure criticism is my jam at this point though. My disaffect for criticism doesn't mean this book didn't have things worth remembering, by any means. I loved the entirety of "Which is the world?" This book is full of beautiful descriptions of the goals of poetry and the work of writing.


- "poems tend to transform, not translate—they are indeed translations of felt and thought experience into verbal presentation, but their business, as it were, is to transform experience so that our assumption about a given experience can be disturbed and, accordingly, our thinking about that experience might be at once made more complicated, deeper, richer. (19)

- "sorrow is pushed further away by being brought into a perspective that allows the speaker to remember that sorrow can only exist in the context of joy and laughter." (27)

- "poems that tend to last over time—those that, whether directly or indirectly, concern themselves finally with the large abstractions that resist solution: love, death, grief, joy, aggression, desire: word—subjects, even—often deemed inappropriate for contemporary poetry. . . since when was poetry not about and of human feeling?" (37)

- " We are, each of us, uniquely haunted. . . I believe we write as a means not of laying these ghosts and demons to rest, but of giving them, however briefly, a context within which we feel we've brought under control what we know full well we cannot control. The poem is a form of negotiation with what haunts us." (65)

- "One way of thinking of a poem is, in fact, as an effort at speech between two people. . .Is that really, though, what a poet wants, an erasure of estragement, speech between two people? Or is the effort—a word I keep leaning on in Rukeyser's title—is the effort enough?" (69)

- "So much of poetry seems rooted in this tug-of-war between seeing a thing for what it is and our human impulse to see a thing for what it resembles." (87)

- "*Why am I who I am?* the mind wonders. . . It's the body, though, without which we couldn't know this world, couldn't touch it, see it. And the body, instead of *Who am I?* says *Here I am: Do with me what you will.* (112)

- "*To know is to live flayed* and *Ambition/ means turning the flesh repeatedly back—toward the whip,/ not away*, I can still hear myself saying that, believing it—/now it all sounds wrong. . ." (117)

- "Love, too, of course, involves risk. But there would seem no daring to it, since who thinks of the risks?—possibly heartbreak, inevitable loss (to which love necessarily commits us), and worse. And yet who doesn't want it?

"In one version, I'm hitting him—hard, repeatedly; in another, he's kicked the back screen door in, threatening to beat me into the ground. We got here how?" (123)

[Patti K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short book of essays about poetry was published this year by the accomplished
poet, Carl Phillips. I was curious to see what he had to say and I was not
disappointed. He takes seriously the advantage of risk=taking in poetry. A
certain kind of restlessness is good to jog your mind out of the ordinary
and into a more nuanced and complex work. The poet needs to break away
from the ordinary presentation, a form of "the art of decoration," and
try to reveal the secrets, the places where art and life meet or collide.
He also talks of his risk-taking in being an openly gay man writing out
his own restless sexuality. Worth the effort.

[Jill Schepmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In a sense, then, the child dares the man, who becomes briefly a child again, and he takes a chance. He climbs higher... One risk, I suppose, is of losing the control that has always been part of my sensibility; another, that I won't be understood, or I'll somehow be judged. But the risk of not daring is that I'll fail to have been entirely myself--the risk of not daring, you might say, is artifice, inauthenticity... Magic, I believe, is the result of daring, of knowing the risks, albeit not consciously--and acting anyway. It's the part we never expected, while we were thinking somewhere more closely about image, line, diction."

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phillips's "Art of..." book is part personal reflection on his own behaviors and past, and part meditation on poems--his own and those he admires. I imagine some criticism might be made that there ought to be less reflection and more poems, but he asks the pertinent questions about the relationship between the poet and the poem, the self and the lyric self. This might be the most relevant aspect of these essays.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the explications of certain poems that Phillips admires were excellent, and the last section of the book (a meditation of the role of poetry in his own life) was a highlight.

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first half or so of this book is a stunning imperative to risk and dare when writing poetry. The second half seemed less focused and less astute.