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Reconnaissance: Poems
A powerful, inventive collection from one of America's most respected poets
There's
a trembling inside the both of us,
there's a trembling, inside us both.
The territory of Reconnaissance is one where morals threaten to become merely "what the light falls through," "suffering [seems] in fact for nothing," and "all we do is maybe all we can do." In the face of this, Carl Phillips, reconsidering and unraveling what we think we know, maps out the contours of a world in revision, where truth lies captured at one moment and at the next goes free, transformed. These are poems of searing beauty, lit by hope and shadowed by it, from a poet whose work "reinstates the possibility of finding meaning in a world that is forever ready to revoke the sources of meaning in our lives" (Jonathan Farmer, Slate).
54 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2015
17 people are currently reading
384 people want to read
About the author
Carl Phillips
88 books204 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 43 reviews
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April 20, 2022It's difficult to review a book which you feel, in my case at least, that you've failed in a way. These poems are beautiful, with intimacy, loneliness, heartbreak and survival at their core. I missed some parts of it, and I don't think it's the writer's fault. It's just that, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I might lack whatever reader experience—not life inexperience, but reading inexperience in that I'm a relatively new reader of poems in a serious way, and these poems might have resonated with deeper meaning otherwise. I did read this to completion, and it is a wonderful collection despite the gaps in my knowledge, but just can't help feeling I've unfortunately missed a lot. I'll try to come back to these poems and the writer later, hopefully I'll have learned more by then.
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March 2, 2023Idk if it’s the rain or my mellow mood today, but these poems held me so dear. Really felt suspended in a delicate way. How can words do that? A few line breaks took my breath away.
Also, Carl teaches in St. Louis <3
Also, Carl teaches in St. Louis <3
March 11, 2018
The windfalls of my mistakes sweetly rot beneath me
Poetry is a very personal thing. I think different things speak to certain people. These poems are beautifully written, but none of them spoke to me personally that is why I only rated it three stars. I know there are definitely people out there for whom this would be a five star read. The italicized line above was my favorite from the collection.
Poetry is a very personal thing. I think different things speak to certain people. These poems are beautifully written, but none of them spoke to me personally that is why I only rated it three stars. I know there are definitely people out there for whom this would be a five star read. The italicized line above was my favorite from the collection.
July 23, 2021
Oh man, just read this butt-naked next to the lake where I spent my whole childhood. Cathartic and beautiful are words that come to mind. I also don’t know how to review poetry, except by saying ‘I VIBED FAM’.
March 13, 2018
I found this collection of poems difficult to read. The poems were often opaque, and occasionally lucid. The issue for me was the depressing emotional content. I recommend filing on the side of the poetry shelf much closer to Sylvia Plath....the opposite side of the shelf from Billy Collins. I have my own speculations as to what demons Carl Phillips has had to endure in his life. Whatever they are, the emotional burden and toil they place on him comes out in spades with his poetry.
If I were to recommend a single poem in this collection, it is For Night to Fall, which has a nice description of the difference between memory and the past:
... for there's always a difference,
the way what we remember of what happened
is just memory, not history exactly, and
not the past, which is truth, but by then
who cared?
If I were to recommend a single poem in this collection, it is For Night to Fall, which has a nice description of the difference between memory and the past:
... for there's always a difference,
the way what we remember of what happened
is just memory, not history exactly, and
not the past, which is truth, but by then
who cared?
February 24, 2017
I love that we are now at a time in the evolution of gay culture that we have poets such as Carl Phillips who have lived long enough to reflect and deeply investigate as he does a life of gay love, desire, lust and spiritual connection. And these poems do just that, each one revolving around a series of existential questions that he digs deep into, allowing in the line and punctuation breaks the pauses and space the reader's mind needs to look into the tiny fractures of logic he explores. In his world, sex is a spiritual pursuit, an examination of our yearning for connection, even though there are many moments that speaker and his subject try to make it only about the body (as the telling epigraph from James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" foretells). This is what I find most interesting about the gayness of this exploration, for only a life spent constantly negotiating desire not just with oneself, or with the multitudes of partners certain gay lives allow, but also with the culture war around it could lead to the measured voice that Phillips employs, a voice with such powerful equanimity that even in charged moments of emotion, it searches for the complicity each person involved must own. This makes his dives into topics such as forgiveness ("Permission to Speak") and reconciliation ("Shield") more inward looking and hopeful, though the possibility of finding hope seems the eternal question of his work. In terms of language, we still have no poet like him, as his sentences often begin in the middle, or trail off, built of multiple clauses and questions that the reader must trace back to their antecedents, reflecting his meditations on past mistakes and moments, showing how they shift as you age, some shrinking, some growing bigger, always wrestling with making peace with the choices we've made in love. His voice is a gift, a constant reminder of the power of examining our lives for meaning.
January 18, 2021
I'm still trying to figure out what this was about. There were some lines in some poems that were really beautiful, but lines alone don't make a poem, and the whole of most of the poems seemed like pieces of a puzzle forced into positions where they fit into, but are not their places.
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July 24, 2023Made it halfway through before abandoning it. Just didn't like, and couldn't get into his poetry at all.
June 4, 2017
First collection of Phillips’ work. Won’t be my last. Great work of poetry.
July 21, 2017
This book was fine, but it didn't draw any emotion.
Well, one line was pretty good,
" you are the knife,
but you are also what the knife
has opened, says the wind" (pg 19)
I guess this book could've been good I just am not a Huge poetry fan or anything so for me to really like a poetry book it's got to be pretty good (I have enjoyed poetry books in the past, like Ask Me How I Got Here)
But I guess this topic didn't draw me in and if a bad topic is to be enjoyed the writing has to just be that much better, and the thing is I do enjoy some poetry so I think I'm going to make a point of reading more poetry books if I can because just because this book wasn't my cup of tea doesn't mean that no poetry will be.
Well, one line was pretty good,
" you are the knife,
but you are also what the knife
has opened, says the wind" (pg 19)
I guess this book could've been good I just am not a Huge poetry fan or anything so for me to really like a poetry book it's got to be pretty good (I have enjoyed poetry books in the past, like Ask Me How I Got Here)
But I guess this topic didn't draw me in and if a bad topic is to be enjoyed the writing has to just be that much better, and the thing is I do enjoy some poetry so I think I'm going to make a point of reading more poetry books if I can because just because this book wasn't my cup of tea doesn't mean that no poetry will be.
May 6, 2018
4.5
When I read poetry books I note poems that strike me, and return to sit with them, gather them up and hold them, before I feel I am finished the book (and, as I mainly read library books, I return it). There is sitting and understanding left to do.
Short review: beautiful; a harmonious clutter of bits of plant, sea, cliff, light, dark; reading the collection as a whole creates a horse with all its smell, sound, heat, breath, right there in front of you.
When I read poetry books I note poems that strike me, and return to sit with them, gather them up and hold them, before I feel I am finished the book (and, as I mainly read library books, I return it). There is sitting and understanding left to do.
Short review: beautiful; a harmonious clutter of bits of plant, sea, cliff, light, dark; reading the collection as a whole creates a horse with all its smell, sound, heat, breath, right there in front of you.
October 21, 2019
3.5/5
liked a few things, some amazing lines in here, but a lot of poems fell flat for me? the ones i did enjoy i really loved so he definitely gets some credit for that but as a collection, it was kinda meh.
full/unquoted poems that i loved are "Foliage," "From A Land Called Near-Is-Far," "After Learning That The Spell is Irreversible," & "Since You Ask."
"Impenetrable, the logic
by which I mistook your hand
in the night, last night, for mine."
—Meanwhile, and Anyway
"His
skull; my hand. There's
a trembling inside the both of us,
there's a trembling, inside us both."
—Last Night
liked a few things, some amazing lines in here, but a lot of poems fell flat for me? the ones i did enjoy i really loved so he definitely gets some credit for that but as a collection, it was kinda meh.
full/unquoted poems that i loved are "Foliage," "From A Land Called Near-Is-Far," "After Learning That The Spell is Irreversible," & "Since You Ask."
"Impenetrable, the logic
by which I mistook your hand
in the night, last night, for mine."
—Meanwhile, and Anyway
"His
skull; my hand. There's
a trembling inside the both of us,
there's a trembling, inside us both."
—Last Night
January 14, 2020
"Did you know there/are animals that will spend their entire/lives in silence, if they don't get killed/by something more violent"
Collection #2 of my goal of a poetry collection for every week of 2020! There were some syntactical elements in this collection that weren't what I'm into as a reader, but still a few poems that really stood out like "After Learning That the Spell is Irreversible" and "From a Land Called Near is Far"
Collection #2 of my goal of a poetry collection for every week of 2020! There were some syntactical elements in this collection that weren't what I'm into as a reader, but still a few poems that really stood out like "After Learning That the Spell is Irreversible" and "From a Land Called Near is Far"
September 10, 2018
In these volume, a light moves across a life into darknesses where the wild that is in us never is absent, and out again. There is a sense of having matured with experience:
All the several darknesses that I hated once,
though more often, lately, I row inside them,
stolen boats, blown aslant these waters . . . (30)
April 21, 2020
I began to think of these poems as labyrinths as I spent time with--in--each one, recrossing my steps, rereading, pondering desire and memory and syntax. I've come late to Carl Phillips' work; though I read and enjoyed _In the Blood_ when it was first published, I've not spent much time with his other books. But I will. I don't know of anyone else who writes quite like this.
April 21, 2022
”Of the many things that he used to say to me, there are two
I’m certain of: You taste like a last less-than-long summer afternoon by the shore just before September; and
You’re the kind of betrayal, understand, I’ve been waiting for,
all my life.”
It’s definitely radiates a vibe.
But I don’t think I’m cool enough to really get it.
I’m certain of: You taste like a last less-than-long summer afternoon by the shore just before September; and
You’re the kind of betrayal, understand, I’ve been waiting for,
all my life.”
It’s definitely radiates a vibe.
But I don’t think I’m cool enough to really get it.
December 4, 2023
i breezed through this. his writing style reminds me of Siken, a little bit wry. Subject matter is more holiness, flowers, and animals. A great end to the sealey challenge.
Copy obtained via Libby
Copy obtained via Libby
January 28, 2018
It's a forgiving collection of prose-poetry. Overuses the ellipsis, but this thinking-aloud approach is quite personal, and captures a fair amount of falling light.
January 10, 2019
"where arrow meets flesh, the blood corsaging..."
"if I've / been restless, then the way a compass can be, / and still be true."
"if I've / been restless, then the way a compass can be, / and still be true."
August 26, 2020
I sink into his poems often without understanding and am still soothed and expanded... those times I feel I do understand feels like an extra gift to be tucked close and treasured.
April 1, 2021
the first half of this was much, much better than the second half but given just how good that first half was i can forgive it
April 5, 2021
SIX WORD REVIEW: Natural poems, humble poems, probing poems.
May 25, 2021
Carl Phillips is unrivaled. Just excruciatingly beautiful, poetry in constant revision.
October 12, 2021
not my favourite of phillips’ collections, but still has a few poems i’ll be coming back to reread. 3.5 overall.
February 1, 2022
Could have more variety.
July 7, 2022
Hot but lowkey hot or miss 😬 Mad respect for Carl Phillips tho don’t get it twisted!
January 19, 2024
Reconnaissance! oh the title and the cover kinda reminded me of Beyoncé’s Renaissance, ngl
March 3, 2024
More obtuse poetry. Good lines and sections but not even a single poem in entirety made me go “wow”. This is a little book of puzzling poems.
July 29, 2024
generous 4. was good tho. poems felt very delicate, almost like he suspended time
January 10, 2025
one of my favorite poetry books i've read recently
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews