Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems

by Carl Phillips

An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips.

Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that’s based on human memory. If the poet’s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one focuses on the usefulness of embracing it and of releasing ourselves from the need to understand our past. If we remember a thing, did it happen? If we believe it didn’t, does that make our belief true?

In Scattered Snows, to the North , Phillips looks though the window of the past in order to understand the essential sameness of the human condition―“Tears / were tears,” mistakes were made and regretted or not regretted, and it mattered until it didn’t, the way people live until they don’t. And there was also joy. And beauty. “ Yet the world’s still / so beautiful . . . Sometimes // it is . . .” And it was enough. And it still can be.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Gay

80 pages, Hardcover

Published August 6, 2024

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

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) Phillips is a prolific poet I’d somehow never heard of. In fact, he won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his selected poetry volume. He’s gay and African American, and in his evocative verse he summons up landscapes and a variety of weather, including as a metaphor for emotions – guilt, shame, and regret. Looking back over broken relationships, he questions his memory. Will I remember individual poems? Unlikely. But the sense of chilly, clear-eyed reflection, yes.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Beth Cato · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advance copy via NetGalley.

This poetry book makes for a brief, contemplative read as Phillips addresses nature, the human condition, and a wide array of emotions. I hadn’t read him before now; while I cannot say that every poem resounded within my body like a plucked harp string, there were verses that made me gasp and whisper “Wow” to myself as I reread the lines as if I could absorb those select syllables of genius. A few of my favorites were:

"...how / forgiveness might look / in the face, say, if it had a face, and forgiveness / were real..."

"...The ospreys / slept in their nests, presumably: for omens / also need sleep; indeed, the best ones can sleep for / years, uninterrupted."
"... I could see my face, / tilted there, like a solar eclipse viewed indirectly, / which / is the proper way, in a basin of water..."

[Oscreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED!!

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

How I love reading Carl Phillips’ poetry! I am happy to have read this one, Scattered Snows, to the North, his newest book. Out of the 16 or more books he has produced I’ve only read four but I know I will read more.
His voice is warm and seemingly next to me. He speaks of nature, of animals, of Roman history and then we are plunged into a relationship, a quandary, the thought of someone he misses.
Carl Phillips is gay and mixed race. His African American father was in the military and so he grew up moving around. At Harvard he was interested in Greek and Roman classics. He was surprised to win the Pulitzer Prize last year.
But listen, this is how he writes poetry: “Writing is, for me, a bodily act, moving the arm, hearing the pen scratch, feeling the paper." This reassures me.
In a wonderful essay on Silence in the Literary Hub he writes: “To write is to resist invisibility. By having spoken, I’ve resisted silence before again returning to it.”
His poetry is very worth reading. Here are some lines from the poem “Rehearsal”:
deep inside the earth. Maybe
meeting you has been
the one good reason I lasted so long
in a world that must
eventually not include me, I almost
said to him. Past the forest

So you get a sense of his line breaks and the subtle inclusion of a very important that that was unsaid yet between the earth and the forest. This is Carl Phillips.
Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for giving me a digital copy to review.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both though-provoking and awe-inspiring. I hadn't read any of Carl Phillips work before, but I'm a big fan now and plan to read any and everything he's written.

One of those collections that will stick with you forever.

I highly highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys poetry or who appreciates a nuanced take on memory and its unreliability.

Now Available! Published 8/8/24!

{Thank you to NetGalley, Carl Phillips, and publisher for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!}

[Bella Moses · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carl Phillip's poems are as beautiful and earthshattering as ever in this new collection, which focuses heavily on the dynamics of memory and forgetting. These questions, present in Pale Colors in a Tall Field, are brought front and center here, although the feeling one gets at the end of this book is that the poets feels that memory may have ceased to serve its purpose. Forgetting is championed in these pages, as are failure, distance, and disillusionment. My only critique is the brevity of this book, which is fitting to the subject matter—I just wanted more. Thanks to the FSG publicity department and NetGalley for the ARC.

[Gregory Duke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy Carl Phillips, but reading his work in these two most recent collections (aka in a large group in a short time) highlights his use of abstract nouns, like love, betrayal, forgiveness, regret, a tactic which ends up alienating me. These words, in the context of Phillips' poetry of cognition, operate as shortcuts, fallible shortshrifters, allowing lacunae in the logic, leaps of faith without a cliffside to catch. So I end up left with a collection of poems presenting some really lovely lines and some specific imagery and some BIG THEMES: MEMORY, FORGETTING, HISTORY yet it sours and sours without becoming fine.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

there is something about reading carl philips that makes me feel like i’m reading for the first time.

WESTERN EDGE

I need you
the way astonishment,
which is really just

the disruption of routine,
requires routine.
Isn't there

a shock, though —
a thrill—
to having done

what we had to?
Unequally, but
in earnest, we love

as we can,
he used to mumble,
not so much his

mouth moving,
more the words
themselves sort of

staggering around lost
inside it ... Now
show me

exactly what
you think being brave
is.

tysm to netgalley for this rockin arc.

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh Carl. You wonder. You sly dog.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am newish to reading poetry but am inspired by a few goodreads friends, particularly, JulieG, to expand my reading. I was caught by the cover drawing of a wild bunny. He is huddled in the wild,looking vulnerable yet at home. The poet is a pulitzer prize winner. So I took the book home and spent some time here and there,tasting the poems,reading them aloud to my cat, seeing Mr Phillips word pictures.i found several works arresting- Before all of this,Somewhere it's still summer,Mechanics, Stop shaking,Refrain to name a few. The overall feeling is that of coming into one's own, self,love,posterity, forgiveness all settling down inside and allowing life to flow onward. Kinda like the wild contented bunny.

[Raegan Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

…… potentially the most remarkable book of poems I have ever read… I’m genuinely astonished

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time reading Carl Phillips and the entire time it felt as though I were in the room hearing him consider these words before etching them into the pages. The way he writes about love… and furthermore- loss and life after love is painfully reminiscent and heartbreakingly understandable.
Anyone who has loved and lost knows the emotions and cycles of questioning and remembering and wishing you could forget only to want to long for the memories again- will find company in this collection.

“I need you
The way astonishment,
Which is really just

The disruption of routine
Requires routine”
- Western Edge

“I keep my best to myself; my worst
Also. I think the truth
Lies elsewhere”
-Somewhere it’s still Summer

Thank you Carl Phillips, NetGalley, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the opportunity to read and review this collection

[Afra Binte Azad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Atmospheric and elusive

[mercuri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like I had higher hopes for this book but maybe I was wrong— it wasn't bad but giving a bit of louise gluck from last year.

[Anton Frommelt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know how to rate poetry but I enjoyed this

[Harrison Glaze · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Matthew Lewellyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inclined to lean toward 2.5 stars— some good moments, but underwhelming and semi-disjointed on the whole.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

As for the sea, where’s that sound now, that the snow made in black and white, falling into it, the snow like words from a severed head held aloft, upside down, and shaken— Nothing can ever/will ever/be the same. Even if still reckless: wildering; wild. Though I seem tame.

Beautiful collection of poems, excerpts below of some of my favorites. Slow burn, earthy, tactile, shy, clever, are some of the words that come to mind.

REGIME
The sound of rain was for
once not the sound

of wind shaking
the rain steadily loose
from a stand
of river birch. It’s hard
to believe in them,
the beautiful colors

of extinction;
but these are the colors.

VIKINGS
The Vikings thought the wind was a god, that the eyes
were holes. A window meant a wind-eye, for the god to
see with, and at the same time through.
…
I’d leave the window open, as I do now—if closed, I open it—
then pull the drapes shut across it, which of the many I’ve tried
remains the best way I know, still, to catch a wind god breathing.

FALL COLORS
I almost believe in the self that’s just an imitation of a self I want others to believe in enough for me eventually to believe it, too. Believing in, versus believing … The trumpet vine that grows up the ginkgo’s trunk and has even reached its branches is an example of instinct, not affection. Twice a day, instead of walking, I take my dog for what I call a ramble, where each corner we turn feels like a turning, as well, of imagination. The sun’s behind us now; its heat, on this cold November afternoon that’ll soon join all the rest whose details I’ve forgotten, seems a small encouragement: all that’s needed, most times. I stop; the dog stops— our shadows, too. They bloom our shadows north-northeast in front of us.

REFRAIN
The ring of aspens that surround my fortress,
that of course know nothing of east or
west or love when scattered in all its countless definitions,

form a natural palisade that, in leafless months, can seem especially
severe but somehow, as well, inviting, how forgiveness might look
in the face, say, if it had a face, and forgiveness were real.

FAMILIAR IN WHAT WAY
…moving like an insistent but gently reverberating halo of expectations, kinetic crown pulled forward, as if magnetically, across the ocean’s floor.
SCATTERED SNOWS, TO THE NORTH
Does it matter that the Roman Empire
was still early in its slow
unwinding into never again? Then,
as now, didn’t people burst into tears
in front of other people, or in private,
for no reason that they were willing
to give, or they weren’t yet able to,

or for just no reason? I’ve never
stopped missing you, I used to
practice saying, for when I’d
need those lines, as I assumed
I would, given what I knew then—
nothing, really—about things
like love, trust, the betrayal
of trust, and a willfulness that’s
only deepened inside me, all
these years, during which I can
almost say I’ve missed no one—
though it hurts,
to say it …

Honestly, the Roman Empire,
despite my once having studied it,
barely makes any sense to me now,
past the back-and-forthing of
patrolled borders as the gauge
and proof of hunger’s addictive
and erosive powers. But there were
people, of course, too, most of them
destined to be unremembered,
who filled in their drawn lives
anyway—because what else
is there?—to where the edges
gave out. If it was night, they lit
fires, presumably. Tears
were tears.

LITTLE WINTER
Little season, caught, or stranded, between whatever
inside us makes us each go on and the less predictable part,
more fragile, that makes us want to. Little fever-snow of
days when, just as certain colors, even now, can suggest a time
that you called innocent, more honest—though to think so
is itself dishonest, none of it was true, or for only some
was it true—you understand, and can almost admit it…

SURFERS
They mostly pretended not to notice me, though one time, watching them from where I’d hidden in a stretch of dune grass, I could see a couple of them with hands raised to their eyes, scanning the dunes as if searching, and I stood up, un-hid myself, and I could tell they’d missed me. Toward nightfall, I’m a lighthouse, I’m a lighthouse, I’d sing to myself but very softly, because boys aren’t lighthouses, that’s nonsense, repeat after me. I could never have guessed at it back then, this second life. It was all I could do, just to be patient as they paddled their boards out again, into the waves, then they’d catch one, and flashing my arms—extended in front of me like the twin beams of light that, softly, they’d always been also—I’d guide the men in: to shore, then closer, as if there were a choice that summer —or ever—and I’d chosen, and I could almost still see it, from here.
IF GRIEF IS MOSTLY PRIVATE AND ALWAYS VARIOUS
As for the sea, where’s that sound now, that the snow made in black and white, falling into it, the snow like words from a severed head held aloft, upside down, and shaken— Nothing can ever/will ever/be the same. Even if still reckless: wildering; wild. Though I seem tame.
SEARCHLIGHTS
All at once, the tiger lilies were out and we’d come too far, world versus what I’ve called the world versus what I’ve made of it and shaped to my taste, favoring, instead of the sky’s edgeless statement about vastness, the sea’s mixed set of questions whose only answers, finally, are the questions themselves, Is pleasure in fact a lens to make suffering more legible, for example…
I can see my face, my mouth moving inside it, I can see the words, though I can’t hear them, finding shape first, then meaning, the way smoke does, Don’t, which is not a question; then just the smell of rain, which is.
THICKET
Some memories stay, like fallen throwing-stars left to lie there; most disappear, whatever distinguished them rubbed smooth by dailiness, glass into sea glass, from the sea’s tumbling.
TROUBADOURS
Life itself being a ramble of mystery, pattern, accident, and surprise, we took heart in knowing whatever road we were on must be the right one—or anyway, we believed it was, and belief still counts. We pressed forward. We weren’t afraid. Nor unafraid. We stopped briefly to watch the broad leaves, discolored now, of a catalpa fall onto and get carried off by the river whose course, more or less, we’d been following, too. The leaves fell as if to a song called “Come When I Tell You To,” the water
received the leaves like a slightly different song: “Until Spoken To, Shut Up, No One’s Asking, Did I Ask You a Question?” Songs like that. Which is how we learned what we should have known already, that sometimes to remember a thing can hurt more than the thing itself ever did, long ago, back when hurt was a feeling, still, not a memory—not an art, yet. Permission to stop listening, sir, please. And we turned away, kept heading wherever-ward, until wherever became night. How close abundance is to excess, across whose borders lies too-far-gone-anymore-to-care, a place we’d
heard about, sure, plenty, but not yet seen. We made our camp at the border. The air had turned windless. The trees grew quiet, like thinking. That animals aren’t human, but humans are animals— it almost sounds like part of a riddle, or the wrong answer to one, to do as much with obedience as with what’s fair, at least one of us thought but kept, for now, to himself. Variously, we slept or, in the otherwise dark, pretended to. The only fires we lit were private ones. Black. Into blue.
YES
But that was long, long ago.
Back when lanterns were a real thing
people used, to check the foal’s position
inside the birth canal, or for a small boy
to find his way home from shore,
he must have fallen asleep, I can’t
see anyone, where did everyone go? He
isn’t lost, just a little afraid, but he’s
learned how to trick himself into feeling
less afraid: he makes a list in his head
of all he knows for sure. That when
the nights bloom with cricket song,
not yet, not now
isn’t what they’re singing, they’re
not even singing, it just sounds like that.
How what never happened, if it’s
remembered hard enough, can seem
almost true. Nighthawks are called
nighthawks for no fancier reason than
because nocturnal. It was long ago. Now,
as then, there were choices. If not
every choice is one that we get to make,
some we do. You can treat the past
like a piece of fine glass to see yourself
reflected in; or to see through.

CAREER
Long after the dark that the singing was for
is over, some keep singing for a while. As if
refusing to stop could change the fact of daylight

or could make what it felt like to sing hidden
inside the dark—that part, at least—stay. What
is it with the dark, anyway, that the closer they

get to it, the more some people seem to all but
shake with expectancy, even those raised, like us,
to expect nothing?

—What if all the truth is is
an over-washed sweatshirt, sometimes on
purpose worn inside out?

Yet the world’s still
so beautiful, he said. Sometimes, I whispered back,
but barely, just in case he was listening; Sometimes

it is … We were hours from nightfall. Everywhere,
promises kept becoming apologies, our way of
talking-without-talking-about the leaves coming

to rest finally against their own images on the water’s
surface. It seemed enough, we understood it might
have to be, we sat and watched and, briefly, it was.

BACK SOON; DRIVING—
The way the present cuts into history,
or how the future can look at first
like the past sweeping through, there
are blizzards, and there are blizzards.
Some contain us; some we carry
within us until they die, when we do.
The snow falls there, barely snowing,

[Sam Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so thankful to FSG, Carl Phillips, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital access to this collection of poems before this baby hits shelves on August 6, 2024. Scattered Snows, to the North invoked so many emotions as I was reading, truly capturing the narrator's ability to fail while still growing and coming to understand the world he lives in through missteps and wrong turns within his memories.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips is a collection filled with an autumn sensation, even if the poems themselves are set elsewhen, with images of loss and dusk, snow of course, passing of time and love, deterioration of memory, mortality, and yes, actual autumn. The poems often depict the natural world, trees are a constant presence, but also water and weather. As present as the outer world is, though, it’s the inner world that remains the focus throughout.

How you like your poetry will determine your response here. If you like musicality, you might be out of luck, as Phillips doesn’t really call attention to the sound quality of the language, as least not very often. Now and then you get lines like “And as usual, early summer seems already to hold, inside it/the split fruit of late fall, those afternoons whose/diminished music we’ll soon enough”, with the long “u” sound running through “usual-fruit-whose-music-soon.” But those moments are relatively rare (to be clear, that is subtle musicality more often, just not the “hits you clearly” type of assonance, consonance, rhyme).

Similarly, those who like their poem’s meanings to be overtly laid out or nearly tied up in a clear epiphany at the end might be a bit disappointed. I don’t want to say the poems are opaque, because I don’t think they are, and I know that description would scare lots of casual poetry readers (my category) off. So not opaque but say more “open to multiple readings”. Or just “open” in that the poems often don’t close themselves down at the end. I confess I Sometimes wanted to feel a bit more on solid ground, but generally I enjoyed the openness of these pieces.

I also enjoyed that autumnal tone throughout, the “diminished music” from the lines above, the “dead under-branches of the trees”, the “mind done with signaling, letting its watch fires, one by one/go out, the renegade glamour of late fall.” There’s both a sharp impact in the lines themselves but also a cumulative effect as such images/concept pile one atop the other.

Generally, I found myself responding more strongly to particular lines or passages rather than to poems as a whole (though there are some standouts), but those are the moments, startled by language or juxtaposition or metaphor or where lines bounce off but then land again and linger for a long while, that I come to poetry for, so that’s not a big criticism from me. Before closing with a few examples of those passages, I’ll just say that I strongly recommend this collection, as well as his compilation, which I read recently as well, and which offers up just what you want—a lot more Phillips.

Some favorite moments:
“Whatever the reasons are for the dead/under-branches of the trees that flourish here, that the dead persist/is enough for me, it’s enough.”

“Maybe what a river loves most/about the banks that hold it — that appear to hold it —/is their willingness or resignation to being/mere context for the river’s progress … the way rivers tend to, stands as proof that reliability doesn’t’' have to mean steadfast.”

“I almost believe in the self that’s just/an imitation of a self I want others to believe in enough for me eventually/to believe it too”

“Why not call it lover —/each gesture — if it does love’s work?”

“for omens/also need sleep; indeed, the best ones can sleep for years, uninterrupted”

“that familiarity/that, because it sometimes/includes loves, can/become confused with it,/though they remain/different animals”

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!

Whenever I read a collection as preoccupied with love as Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North, I have two thoughts: First, I’m immediately on guard because there are few subjects more cliché, and second, I’m immediately interested because there are few subjects more important. Phillips seems to welcome the embarrassment of love’s earnestness, avoiding the usual tropes of being so general as to be toothless or favoring “eros” because its physicality makes it easier to manage. The resulting poems are exultant in their directness, and Phillips writes with an assured voice and a precise sense of when to cut through the elevated or mystical with blasé flippancy. Rather than jarring the reader out of a poem, these turns allow them to move deeper into it—the speaker is self-aware about the absurdity of his pontificating, and that awareness brings it down into the space of intimate reflection.

The world certainly needs politically engaged poetry, but this collection is a testament to the importance of and need for poetry that doesn’t “accomplish” anything. Intimacy matters not because it is the whole world, but because it isn’t, and the quiet attention to it in this collection had me re-reading almost every single poem because they seem to exist—like love—just outside of language. The poet fully inhabits his subjectivity, and it’s not just that watching him do so is beautiful—it’s also interesting, particularly in pieces where he does so explicitly, such as “Somewhere It’s Still Summer.”

As one might expect from the title, nature plays a key and complex role in this collection. The landscapes within Scattered Snows, to the North are almost entirely psychological, and the poet’s concern for beauty within them demands a delicate touch. Readers may be treated to, say, a gorgeous description of a forest, but the speaker always prioritizes how the natural world is encountered first as metaphor.

A recurrent turn in these poems is to parse the space between two ideas, such as attention & adoration or abundance & excess. While the speaker often suggests that it’s impossible to resolve the distance, these pairings do not feel like tension—they feel like balance. The same could be said for Scattered Snows, to the North as a whole. These are perfectly balanced poems that never succumb to trite aphorisms about life and love, and the invocation of the natural world situates them in a beautiful emotional ecology.

What a book!

[Cody Lakin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It’s hard
to believe in them,
the beautiful colors

of extinction; but
these are the colors.”
.
It’s hard for me to describe what the poetry of Carl Phillips means to me. As I picked up his new book, SCATTERED SNOWS, TO THE NORTH, it occurred to me how it feels like a privilege to read this work, to be alive during a time that Carl Phillips is writing poetry.
I think of these poems as dancing somewhere on the intersection between the lyrical abstract and the language of everyday life. I’ll never forget first discovering Phillips’s work, how I was struggling with it until I read one of the poems aloud—and then it all clicked. I could hear the voice, could follow the unique rhythms, how the language charts a landscape of interiority, speaking of such things as the gift or cruelty of memory and forgetting; of love as rescue and an act of flawed but beautiful courage; of longing as texture and inevitability; of the conditions we inhabit like places—intimacy, sorrow, history, regret, desire, sex, gratitude, pain. In truth, I hesitate even to try and describe it, for fear of not doing it justice, not capturing the way it plays on the mind and heart so masterfully and specifically.
.
“you can understand, and can almost admit it,
that the years and energy you’ve spent forgetting someone
only mean you remember, still…”
.
When I write poetry, it’s more so something that just happens: a way of looking, a way of feeling sometimes more clearly. When I read it, it’s in appreciation and love of the form and craft, yes, but mostly it’s for what it does to my heart. How it gives and finds voice for what, maybe, I didn’t know could be said. That is, at least, how I feel about the poetry of Carl Phillips. I’ll be carrying this new collection around with me, reading ones aloud to myself, for months to come, no doubt. His work makes me feel brave in both writing and living.
.
“we love
as we can,
he used to mumble,
not so much his

mouth moving,
more the words
themselves sort of

staggering around lost
inside it… Now
show me

exactly what
you think being brave
is.”

[hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

“even your mistakes were delicate.”

i strongly believe that we can find a poetry book that speaks to us, where you can almost hear their voices without needing the audiobook (if there’s any), as the lines flow smoothly in your mind. rarely do i feel this connection with a poetry collection, and when i do, it instantly becomes a new favorite of mine. reading carl phillips’s poems resonated deeply with me, despite not experiencing the same situations. i couldn’t comprehend how these poems effortlessly flowed through me, as if they were reading me whole. indeed, it’s a privilege for me to have read this collection in advance, but also unfortunate that i couldn’t share more of it. however, each poem struck a chord with me, like an album without skips.

each poem reflects distinct feelings intertwining with each other. the title ‘scattered snow, to the north’ felt perfectly fitting for this collection because the poems seemed like abandoned pieces of words trying to find their way back to you. they’re cold, almost withered, yet full of longing, wanting, just reminiscing about the moments they shared. the incorporation of nature in each poem also felt natural and genius. it didn’t feel forced to sound overly metaphorical, and it evoked similar feelings to what mary oliver’s works have done for me (although i’ve only read a few of her works).

it’s set to come in august, and i hope you all can get your hands on it if possible! thank you @fsgbooks and @netgalley for this e-arc!

[Meredith]

This is a collection of poems written by Carl Phillips, using nature as a metaphor or catalyst for relationships, memories, the past, and memories of past relationships.

My favorite lines, descriptions, ideas, etc ... :
• "people ... most of them destined to be unremembered, who filled their drawn lives anyway" from "Scattered Snows, the North"
• "There are pleasures so ordinary that we barely notice them. They leave no impression worth mentioning." from "The Closing Hour"
• "Some memories stay, like fallen throwing-stars left to lie there; most disappear, whatever distinguished them rugged smooth by dailiness, glass into sea glass ..." from "Thicket"
• "violence has no face" from "Thicket"
• "I used to be that cruel, by which I mean I was frightened mostly, and now I'm mostly not." from "Fist and Palm"
• "like history already mistaking itself for myth again" from "Sunlight in Fog"
• "the years and energy you've spent forgetting someone only means you remember, still" from "Little Winter"

One of the most striking themes was the assertion that the poet does not regret, which, as a person who regrets intensely, I found fascinating.

[Mara]

Favorite poems in this collection include: “Scattered Snows, To the North,” “Western Edge,” and “The Closing Hour.”

“Then a sad
sort of quiet, just after, as between two people who have finally realized
they’ve stopped regretting the same things.” (p.4)

“Why not call it love—
each gesture—if it does love’s work?” (p.10)

“I need you
the way astonishment,
which is really just
the disruption of routine,
requires routine.” (p.21)

“Desire had become by then something different
from what it had been. More hurricane than tornado, its
damage therefore more easily at least prepared against,
if not forestalled.” (p.30)

“I keep my best to myself; my worst
also. I think the truth
lies elsewhere.” (p.31)

“You can
make the stars spell out
anything if you stare
long and hard enough” (p.36)

“Isn’t this
obedience, these songs I’ve
built from things too difficult
to speak of?” (p.45)

“You can treat the past
like a piece of fine glass to see yourself
reflected in; or to see through.” (p.48)

“Revelation is not disclosure.” (p.53)

[genrejourneys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4/5
(Gifted a copy on NetGalley in exchange for a review)

Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems by Carl Phillips is a collection deeply invested in the mundane or the averageness of human experience. Grief, desire, confusion, love and shock all are filtered through the unrelenting pace of time and the simple fact most of us go unnoticed by history. Moving from personal experience to short fables to the Roman Empire, this collection validates, even as it struggles with, these two contrasting ideas. The poems are ultimately less about the tragedy of time and more the quiet understanding that what we experience is nothing new. While the ultimate meshing is a touch chaotic, Phillips’ strong poetic voice and the collection’s pulsing heart carry it. Favorite poems included “Before All of This”, “This Is the Light”, and “Somewhere It’s Still Summer”. This is a great collection for lovers of poetry and best enjoyed on a quiet afternoon.

[Jacob Binder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carl Phillips has a masterful ability to capture, if only for the short moment of a poem, those feelings that most resist expression. Or, as he puts it, he builds songs "from things too difficult to speak of" (Fist and Palm, 45). This collection, Scattered Snows, to the North, explores longing, regret, passion, delusion, desire, memory, and more, all mixed together and in various combinations of metaphor and image. Phillip's poetry is powerful and clarifying. Like taking a deep breath of crisp winter air - raw and honest and tinged with revelation.

"...you understand, and can almost admit it,
that the years and energy you've spent forgetting someone
only mean you remember, still: at once more clearly and with
increasing inaccuracy, until what's false, being all you can see,
becomes the past that justifies
all the things you are..."
(Little Winter, 19)

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is Carl Phillips a competent poet? Yes. But he’s not my guy. I found his 2023 Pulitzer Winner Then the War difficult to get through. That said, I did like this book better than Then the War and I particularly liked the poems in the second half of the book, where he does less equivocating. I’m still not very fond of how he uses the natural world. It’s as though he only uses it for metaphor, feeling no connection to it otherwise. As was true with Then the War, he is almost continuously in relationship in his poems. I began to feel claustrophobic, like I needed to tell this lurking non-specific person (or people) to back off, give Phillips some breathing room. I’m sure that says as much about me as about Phillips or the person/people he’s referring to. We are different people, Phillips and I. I read this book as part of a self-assigned project to read long lists of major poetry prizes. It’s nearly done. I can now give Phillips some breathing room myself.

[Natasha Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a well organized collection of poetry. For the lay reader (such as myself) it can feel a bit advanced and flowery, due to the extended use of nature metaphors but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the work. It simply means I’ll be returning to this book later on to dig deep into the individual poems I found a surface-level connection with and want to understand more thoroughly. I also think that this is one book where the printed form of the book may be better than the ebook, simply due to the structure of the poems and ease of reading.

I feel “Sunlight in Fog” and “Mechanics” deserve special recognition, however, as I found myself crying while reading both and couldn’t stop thinking about each while I tried to go to sleep.

This was my first read of Phillip’s work, and I’m now excited to seek out and read more of his poetry.

[Ashley McMullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first collection of poetry by Carl Phillips, but it won't be my last. Phillips is a master with words and imagery from the first page. I love that this collection delved into memory and its fallibility, the human condition, and how those two things inextricably work together to build humanity generation after generation.

Some of the poetry construction could be a bit difficult for newer readers to follow, and I found I had to re-read several poems to make sure I was understanding what was being said, but it's a collection worth reading and re-visiting in years to come. Beautiful and profound, there are lines in these pages that I will carry with me forever.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for giving me advanced reader access to this title. It publishes August 6, 2024.