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Pastoral
Carnal Prayers
Prayer and the body are the two big themes rippling through Pastoral, Carl Phillips's new book of luminous, questioning poems. Trained in classical Greek and Latin, Phillips seems to excavate as he forms words into lines, breaking images into tiny parts of thought as he digs for meaning and accuracy.
As part of this excavation, Pastoral explores what flesh, wanting, and belief are made of. A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Phillips has produced four collections of accomplished verse in the past few years. In each book, the influence of classical syntax and rhythm can be heard. And with each book, Phillips refines his poetic voice, combining the prayerlike and the erotic, and often elegantly swooping from a whisper to a scream in the space of a few stanzas.
This time, the poems fall along a wide range of tones, from italicized commands like "Let me" and "Now" in the poem "Lay Me Down" to a hesitant question, or a deepening well of self-doubt. Phillips is always original, and he's always remembering, even when a poem is firmly written in present tense. He is hyperaware not only of the ancient poets, but also of history, especially the great destructions.
In the ominously titled "The Kill," he remembers a familiar daily scene. The speaker analyzes his own love for another in clinical detail that suddenly veers into longing. The way these lines break adds to the sense of tragic fragment, of an ache:
The last time I gave my body up,
to you, I was minded
briefly what it is made of,
what yours is, that
I'd forgotten, the flesh
which always
I hold in plenty no
little sorrow for because -- oh, do
but think on its predicament,
and weep.
In just four stanzas, Phillips moves from an image of both love and surrender to a consideration of temporality -- the bald fact that his lover is mortal. This thought of "its predicament" makes him weep, even though death is not a stated issue here.
In "The Kill," the last poem in the volume, the speaker anticipates the need to remember. The second poem in the book referred to Pompeii, and the shadow of Pompeii is still resonant as the speaker describes his lover's body, still current and alive despite the title's warning.
He remembers a body he has felt before, and probably will feel again -- judging by the present tense of "what yours is." And yet, the speaker here feels the need to freeze that body in time, to memorialize it. The next stanza explains this strong urge to hold on:
We cleave most entirely
to what most we fear
losing. We fear loss
because we understand
the fact of it, its largeness, its
utter indifference to whether
we do, or don't,
ignore it.
The "largeness" of loss is what these poems are loath to accept, even as they seek to understand. Each poem tries to break loss down into questions, confessions, prayers, or simple expressions of doubt. While the poems fight against death and inevitable loss, they also seem to seek moral guidance to help with these losses.
Nowhere is the search for answers and guidance more apparent than at the endings of these poems, which are frequently questions. Phillips is fond of abrupt, mysterious dashes as conclusions. In his quest for a moral compass, he also quotes from "Lamentations" and draws on familiar Biblical stories. The wanderings of Cain, for example, seem to appear in the backgrounds of poems where man seeks. What's more, the epigraph is from George Herbert, the great poet of faith and the war between faith and flesh.
The sense of struggle between opposing ideas is something Phillips incorporates and modernizes into a contemporary parable of carnal love and constant questioning of that love. There's a frequent seesawing in the book, a back-and-forth on the big questions that permeates even the simplest narrative. For example, in "Favor," the second section of a five-part poem called "And Fitful Memories of Pan," Phillips sees a man in the distance:
Even from a distance, I can tell:
a man, clearly.
&n...
96 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2002
4 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
About the author
Carl Phillips
88 books205 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 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 5, 2018
the way waves do expect
never breaking,
*
Every stranger
is an envoy of Fate’s
court—
*
same voices,
ghosts, same
hungers come,
stop coming—
never breaking,
*
Every stranger
is an envoy of Fate’s
court—
*
same voices,
ghosts, same
hungers come,
stop coming—
November 12, 2009
An earlier book of Carl Phillips'. In it, he wrestles, visibly, with what it means to create and what he must sacrifice to do so, how taking unnecessary risks is what separates humans from animals, and the violence inherent in everything- nature, sex, art. Quotable, quotable.
August 1, 2018
The use of Biblical and classical imagery here is beautiful, and for this it differs from a ton of contemporary poetry. A fantastic book.
August 12, 2023
At this hour of sun, in clubs of
light, in broad beams failing, I do not
stop it: I love you. Let us finally, un-
daunted, slow, with the slowness that a
jaded ease engenders, together
step into - this hour, this sun...
light, in broad beams failing, I do not
stop it: I love you. Let us finally, un-
daunted, slow, with the slowness that a
jaded ease engenders, together
step into - this hour, this sun...
July 11, 2025
“como el arrumbado colapso
que a veces asume la adoración
en los rostros desgarrados de los creyentes que
enfrentaron a una prueba especialmente dura”.
Trance en el camino a la entrega. Introspección y revisión a la materia. Son destellos, encuentros y chispazos que la pluma de Carl Phillips rescata en deseo de una colección de poemas que coquetean con la culminación más pulcra sobre la corporalidad.
El libro se compone de cinco partes, teniendo primera y última labor de sumergirnos en un estado de embeleso, utilizando eclético lenguaje en estrofas que se componen de tres versos en su mayoría. Se dice “que es algo alcanzable, cualquier fin real / del deseo, y que está cerca, y que / es probable, cómo te resistirías // a tomarlo esta vez: vislumbrando, / carne iluminada” (17). Desde las primeras páginas ya se saborea ese dardo a la destreza, alumbra un estado opaco de realidad que se esfuma cuando el músculo alcanza ese desear, se extiende y abraza largo lo que ha buscado culminar. La belleza reside sobre todo en cómo el corte versal provoca que las estrofas estén unidas entre hilos conceptuales, pero también tengan una autonomía donde cada pulso brilla por sí mismo.
Hay movimiento a cada momento. Respeta la esencia del erotismo cuidado, bosquejando sutiles espasmos erráticos, en forjado condensar reverencias entregadas a los cruces: “Si es que hay una, la forma / de cualquier línea / es su dirección” (21). Un husmear lento y paciente para esa entrega acorazonada, “un llamado que parecía / que nunca iba a terminar, acabar / su descontrol” (71). Hacer de la paciencia, nervio y hambre.
Admiro en demasía la agilidad que tiene el autor para manejar esa dualidad temática en la que se imbrica la vitalidad incentivada por los cuerpos humanos y la pastoral sacramentada en ritos, cruces y súplicas. Ninguna de las dos vertientes se vuelve empalagosa, se nutren entre sí para que cada temática tenga su verso separado, pero tengan una elocuente conexión una vez que el poema ha sido terminado. No se hace empalagoso ni rechazable pasar desde un “porque los dioses no son / indiferentes, en que nos elevamos // a lo que ya es la nueva vida” (59) a un “patrones musculares que / predeciblemente, dada la tensión y // liberación, asume la carne” (55). Produce extrañeza, sí, pero son túneles contrarios con una coherencia tan bien pulida que inevitablemente se torna deleitoso de leer.
Creo que los siguientes versos capturan bien la esencia de Pastoral:
“entre las enredaderas, sus manos - / moldeadas por el daño, ajustadas / para él – pusieron estacas” (91)
Lo pastoral significa devoción, erradicando la clásica figura religiosa para colocar al sujeto detonante de deseo que implica motivo de adoración. En tal estado, de vigorosa elevación, se torna errante la consumación entre dos.
Nota aparte. Tremenda traducción la de Francisco Cardemil Pérez. Fui leyendo los poemas tanto en inglés como en español, y vaya que le saca jugo a estos versos. Les llena de vigor y respeta en todo momento el estilo propio. Mi más profundo agradecimiento. Muy entusiasmado con lo que se venga para Ágata Musgo Editora.
que a veces asume la adoración
en los rostros desgarrados de los creyentes que
enfrentaron a una prueba especialmente dura”.
Trance en el camino a la entrega. Introspección y revisión a la materia. Son destellos, encuentros y chispazos que la pluma de Carl Phillips rescata en deseo de una colección de poemas que coquetean con la culminación más pulcra sobre la corporalidad.
El libro se compone de cinco partes, teniendo primera y última labor de sumergirnos en un estado de embeleso, utilizando eclético lenguaje en estrofas que se componen de tres versos en su mayoría. Se dice “que es algo alcanzable, cualquier fin real / del deseo, y que está cerca, y que / es probable, cómo te resistirías // a tomarlo esta vez: vislumbrando, / carne iluminada” (17). Desde las primeras páginas ya se saborea ese dardo a la destreza, alumbra un estado opaco de realidad que se esfuma cuando el músculo alcanza ese desear, se extiende y abraza largo lo que ha buscado culminar. La belleza reside sobre todo en cómo el corte versal provoca que las estrofas estén unidas entre hilos conceptuales, pero también tengan una autonomía donde cada pulso brilla por sí mismo.
Hay movimiento a cada momento. Respeta la esencia del erotismo cuidado, bosquejando sutiles espasmos erráticos, en forjado condensar reverencias entregadas a los cruces: “Si es que hay una, la forma / de cualquier línea / es su dirección” (21). Un husmear lento y paciente para esa entrega acorazonada, “un llamado que parecía / que nunca iba a terminar, acabar / su descontrol” (71). Hacer de la paciencia, nervio y hambre.
Admiro en demasía la agilidad que tiene el autor para manejar esa dualidad temática en la que se imbrica la vitalidad incentivada por los cuerpos humanos y la pastoral sacramentada en ritos, cruces y súplicas. Ninguna de las dos vertientes se vuelve empalagosa, se nutren entre sí para que cada temática tenga su verso separado, pero tengan una elocuente conexión una vez que el poema ha sido terminado. No se hace empalagoso ni rechazable pasar desde un “porque los dioses no son / indiferentes, en que nos elevamos // a lo que ya es la nueva vida” (59) a un “patrones musculares que / predeciblemente, dada la tensión y // liberación, asume la carne” (55). Produce extrañeza, sí, pero son túneles contrarios con una coherencia tan bien pulida que inevitablemente se torna deleitoso de leer.
Creo que los siguientes versos capturan bien la esencia de Pastoral:
“entre las enredaderas, sus manos - / moldeadas por el daño, ajustadas / para él – pusieron estacas” (91)
Lo pastoral significa devoción, erradicando la clásica figura religiosa para colocar al sujeto detonante de deseo que implica motivo de adoración. En tal estado, de vigorosa elevación, se torna errante la consumación entre dos.
Nota aparte. Tremenda traducción la de Francisco Cardemil Pérez. Fui leyendo los poemas tanto en inglés como en español, y vaya que le saca jugo a estos versos. Les llena de vigor y respeta en todo momento el estilo propio. Mi más profundo agradecimiento. Muy entusiasmado con lo que se venga para Ágata Musgo Editora.
January 26, 2018
Books land on my "To be read" list and I often wonder if I'll ever find them. Wondering in the poetry section of the Yorkville Library the other day I came across Carl Phillips book of poetry "Pastoral" which I'd added to my list quite a number of years ago. I'd call this a place where nature, art and spirit meet, but it is much less about spirituality than I'd originally been led to believe. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable hour with a cup of tea.
November 18, 2023
dios santo
November 2, 2024
Torn between a 4 and a 5. Some of it was too lofty for my taste but the rest left me to marvel at way at his way with language. Carl Phillips: the more you read, the more you wish to read.
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February 17, 2017811.6 P5584p 2000
December 13, 2013
Fully read it aloud while dinner cooked and this is such a great book! It seems so hesitant, so tripping, but its themes of god/the body, classic imagery and excess's limits just plow straight through all the poetic backtracking and comma-filled poems to strike at very near the core/the mindful, fearful, trying heart.
July 3, 2012
There are just a couple of poems I don't really like. But even in those, there is always something that saves: an image, a turn of phrase, whatever. In the best poems—often lyrical, difficult, generous—one can bask in pure poetic light.
March 2, 2009
Such a sure and steady voice here. I reread this collection of haunting, baroque poems often.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews