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Wild Is the Wind: Poems
A powerful, inventive collection from one of America's most critically admired poets
“What has restlessness been for?”
In Wild Is the Wind, Carl Phillips reflects on love as depicted in the jazz standard for which the book is named—love at once restless, reckless, and yet desired for its potential to bring stability. In the process, he pitches estrangement against communion, examines the past as history versus the past as memory, and reflects on the past’s capacity both to teach and to mislead us—also to make us hesitate in the face of love, given the loss and damage that are, often enough, love’s fallout. How “to say no to despair”? How to take perhaps that greatest risk, the risk of believing in what offers no guarantee? These poems that, in their wedding of the philosophical, meditative, and lyric modes, mark a new stage in Phillips’s remarkable work, stand as further proof that “if Carl Phillips had not come onto the scene, we would have needed to invent him. His idiosyncratic style, his innovative method, and his unique voice are essential steps in the evolution of the craft” (Judith Kitchen, The Georgia Review).
“What has restlessness been for?”
In Wild Is the Wind, Carl Phillips reflects on love as depicted in the jazz standard for which the book is named—love at once restless, reckless, and yet desired for its potential to bring stability. In the process, he pitches estrangement against communion, examines the past as history versus the past as memory, and reflects on the past’s capacity both to teach and to mislead us—also to make us hesitate in the face of love, given the loss and damage that are, often enough, love’s fallout. How “to say no to despair”? How to take perhaps that greatest risk, the risk of believing in what offers no guarantee? These poems that, in their wedding of the philosophical, meditative, and lyric modes, mark a new stage in Phillips’s remarkable work, stand as further proof that “if Carl Phillips had not come onto the scene, we would have needed to invent him. His idiosyncratic style, his innovative method, and his unique voice are essential steps in the evolution of the craft” (Judith Kitchen, The Georgia Review).
55 pages, Hardcover
First published January 23, 2018
27 people are currently reading
831 people want to read
About the author
Carl Phillips
88 books206 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 67 reviews
November 29, 2018
Wonderful, simply wonderful poems!
"There's a rumored humbling effect
to loss that I bear no trace of."
"I have always thought gratitude's the one correct response to having been made,
however painfully, to see this life more up close."
"There's a rumored humbling effect
to loss that I bear no trace of."
"I have always thought gratitude's the one correct response to having been made,
however painfully, to see this life more up close."
September 25, 2020
I can remember as a kid watching the Winter Olympics with the family, how my mother especially loved figure skating competition, and how I impatiently waited for it to end so we could get to the good stuff like speed skating, toboggan and luge, and slaloming.
Anyway, the "judges" were political as hell (like the DSA, or Disunited States of America, is nowadays thanks to its Divider in Chief), and figure skating always had a technical merit score and an artistic merit grade.
This dichotomy works well for Carl Phillips' book. On technical merit, he's up there. What I would call "an exacting poet," in other words, or one who worries over every word either to brilliant effect or exasperating effect, depending. Overall, though, when it comes to artistic merit, there's less punch. At least for this reader. At least coming off a Jim Harrison book, where the free verse is less structured, more comfortable, and a bit messy in a good way.
For one, Phillips' sentences have a habit of imitating the Autobahn. On and on they go, including plenty of commas and dashes as they go along. As an example, I give you the lead-off sentence from the poem, "Crossing":
Now that, at best, we'd rowed halfway across the woods
that we mostly thought of our lives as -- despite the fact
of water -- accepting our position, and understanding it,
still mattered, but not like remembering what
the point had been, why we'd set out at all, from
the very start: to release something, but what? whatever
the erotic version might be of a soul we ourselves scarce
believed in?
Yeah. Stretches like that had me hitting reverse, going back, starting again, trying to focus better, because somewhere along the line (comma or dash) we'd hit a bump and I jumped, falling off the back of the truck, wondering what in hell just happened.
That said, other poems were easier sailing, or at least I kept my balance as we white-watered through Phillips' beautiful sentences, which I know he took great care to write and revise.
Meaning: Like many things poetic, it's all in the eyes of the beholder. For a certain type of poetry reader (the Russian judge, or one from dutiful Belarus, maybe), this will be a perfect 10.
Anyway, the "judges" were political as hell (like the DSA, or Disunited States of America, is nowadays thanks to its Divider in Chief), and figure skating always had a technical merit score and an artistic merit grade.
This dichotomy works well for Carl Phillips' book. On technical merit, he's up there. What I would call "an exacting poet," in other words, or one who worries over every word either to brilliant effect or exasperating effect, depending. Overall, though, when it comes to artistic merit, there's less punch. At least for this reader. At least coming off a Jim Harrison book, where the free verse is less structured, more comfortable, and a bit messy in a good way.
For one, Phillips' sentences have a habit of imitating the Autobahn. On and on they go, including plenty of commas and dashes as they go along. As an example, I give you the lead-off sentence from the poem, "Crossing":
Now that, at best, we'd rowed halfway across the woods
that we mostly thought of our lives as -- despite the fact
of water -- accepting our position, and understanding it,
still mattered, but not like remembering what
the point had been, why we'd set out at all, from
the very start: to release something, but what? whatever
the erotic version might be of a soul we ourselves scarce
believed in?
Yeah. Stretches like that had me hitting reverse, going back, starting again, trying to focus better, because somewhere along the line (comma or dash) we'd hit a bump and I jumped, falling off the back of the truck, wondering what in hell just happened.
That said, other poems were easier sailing, or at least I kept my balance as we white-watered through Phillips' beautiful sentences, which I know he took great care to write and revise.
Meaning: Like many things poetic, it's all in the eyes of the beholder. For a certain type of poetry reader (the Russian judge, or one from dutiful Belarus, maybe), this will be a perfect 10.
June 14, 2018
Linguistically masterful and Melvillian, reveling in the extension and layering of thoughts through stacked clauses and pseudo-digressive asides. Meditative in nature, which is both refreshing in spurts and also lacking a bit of cohesion as a whole. This is considered, philosophical poetry; not unemotional and not even only secondarily so, but always filtered through a headiness that, while always technically impressive (I can't emphasize enough how par excellence the wordsmithery is here), can create a bit of a remove experientially. In the same way, works best as poetry to appreciate rather than to fully, heartfully adore.
April 8, 2021
Sometimes I think maybe I can like poetry, and then sometimes I'm reminded that it can be pretentious and boring. Guess which one this was for me.
August 4, 2021
The poet has developed a distinctive style. Long lines, long stanzas, long phrases, long sentences. It does make the spaces more powerful when they do occur. I always think about what I'm reading, but these felt like work for me. Like run-on poems. Not my favorite.
Read
September 13, 2019Favorite poems are “Gold Leaf” and “From a Bonfire”
“So here we go again, one-handedly fingering
the puckered edges of the exit wounds
memory leaves behind.” (p.10)
“The happiest
people I know are those whose main strategy has
always been detachment.” (p.14)
“There’s plenty I miss, still, that I wouldn’t want back—
which I’m beginning to think might be all regret’s ever had
to mean…” (p.18)
“What’s the word
for the kind of loneliness that can feel like swimming
unassisted in a foreign language, for the very first time?” (p.22)
“There’s a kind of love that
doesn’t extend itself both ways
between two people equally because it doesn’t have to.” (p.26)
“I know what it means, to come to love
all over again the very mistakes I
also know, looking back, I might better have
strayed clear of.” (p.30)
“Intimacy seems nothing more, anymore, than
a form of letting what’s been simple enough become difficult.” (p. 47)
“So here we go again, one-handedly fingering
the puckered edges of the exit wounds
memory leaves behind.” (p.10)
“The happiest
people I know are those whose main strategy has
always been detachment.” (p.14)
“There’s plenty I miss, still, that I wouldn’t want back—
which I’m beginning to think might be all regret’s ever had
to mean…” (p.18)
“What’s the word
for the kind of loneliness that can feel like swimming
unassisted in a foreign language, for the very first time?” (p.22)
“There’s a kind of love that
doesn’t extend itself both ways
between two people equally because it doesn’t have to.” (p.26)
“I know what it means, to come to love
all over again the very mistakes I
also know, looking back, I might better have
strayed clear of.” (p.30)
“Intimacy seems nothing more, anymore, than
a form of letting what’s been simple enough become difficult.” (p. 47)
August 28, 2021
Not to be read once...
Some poetry one can read once and say that was good or not. Some you have to read at least twice if not more and then say good or not. This collection falls into the second category.
Most of the poems take a few reads to grasp the depth, while some are easier to understand. Phillips has a way of taking the ordinary and making it unusual and vice versa. An example is this line, "I've spent this morning clearing best as I can the strange pornography that last night's storms made of the trees in the yard."
This is worth the read and worthy of four stars.
Some poetry one can read once and say that was good or not. Some you have to read at least twice if not more and then say good or not. This collection falls into the second category.
Most of the poems take a few reads to grasp the depth, while some are easier to understand. Phillips has a way of taking the ordinary and making it unusual and vice versa. An example is this line, "I've spent this morning clearing best as I can the strange pornography that last night's storms made of the trees in the yard."
This is worth the read and worthy of four stars.
March 21, 2018
"His face/ was a festival, within which - just as/ tenderness is only sometimes/ weakness, or how what we were/ can become unrecognizable to what we are,/ or think we are - leaves swam the air." Another tender, finely wrought collection from Carl Phillips.
April 10, 2018
a wordsmith excellence
November 22, 2023
Estrangement—
like sacrifice—begins as a word at first, soon it’s
the stuff of drama, cue the follow-up tears that
attend drama, then it’s pretty much the difference
between waking up to a storm and waking up
inside one. Who can say how she got there—
~ from “Monomoy”
like sacrifice—begins as a word at first, soon it’s
the stuff of drama, cue the follow-up tears that
attend drama, then it’s pretty much the difference
between waking up to a storm and waking up
inside one. Who can say how she got there—
~ from “Monomoy”
May 26, 2024
A collection to linger in and revisit.
June 12, 2020
This read metaphorically like a wild wind - and I mean that in the most lovely way.
February 27, 2018
This will likely be my favorite book of the year. I don't know any other poet who so carefully and gently holds the reader within the speaker's own point of view, including all doubts, uncertainties, and fears that come with that view.
From "Brothers in Arms," "I've always thought / gratitude's the one correct response to having been made, / however painfully, to see this life more up close."
From "Not the Waves as They Make Their Way Forward," "Marcus Aurelius wrote down / some thoughts meant apparently only for himself, though / they became Meditations...It begin with gratitude. / How it ends is painful, if I'm remembering right. But it isn't pain."
This sequence reminded me so much of Randall Jarrell's "90 North." The end goes, "I see at last that all the knowledge // I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me— / Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing, / The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness / And we call it wisdom. It is pain."
I think both Phillips and Jarrell can live side by side as they take on pain from different angles, but I was heartened by Phillips's move to, however small, reclaim pain from the meaningless. Pain may not be wisdom in and of itself, but it can lead to not pain, can lead to gratitude and clarity.
From "Brothers in Arms," "I've always thought / gratitude's the one correct response to having been made, / however painfully, to see this life more up close."
From "Not the Waves as They Make Their Way Forward," "Marcus Aurelius wrote down / some thoughts meant apparently only for himself, though / they became Meditations...It begin with gratitude. / How it ends is painful, if I'm remembering right. But it isn't pain."
This sequence reminded me so much of Randall Jarrell's "90 North." The end goes, "I see at last that all the knowledge // I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me— / Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing, / The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness / And we call it wisdom. It is pain."
I think both Phillips and Jarrell can live side by side as they take on pain from different angles, but I was heartened by Phillips's move to, however small, reclaim pain from the meaningless. Pain may not be wisdom in and of itself, but it can lead to not pain, can lead to gratitude and clarity.
May 14, 2018
I’m not sure why exactly but lately I’ve been trying to get into poetry a little bit. It’s just one of those things that suddenly seemed to pop up on my radar more and more, for whatever reason; having decided to be more adventurous in my reading, I’ve given in and picked up a few collections here and there. The latest one to jump off the library shelf at me is Carl Phillips’ “Wild Is The Wind.” As a fan of more literal poetry, unfortunately most of this collection was too flowery and abstract for me. Phillips’ work has a great flow to it but I found the pieces in this book to be kind of repetitive, not just in its themes of regret, memory, and history, but in its words and phrases, too; this collection would’ve been more appropriately titled “As If” since Phillips uses that phrase in at least half of the works included in this book. Still, there were a few poems that really stood out to me. “Wild Is The Wind” wasn’t my cup of tea but I’m still a poetry novice so maybe I’m just not equipped to fully appreciate it.
FAVORITES:
“Gold Leaf” - An animal skull leads to a contemplation of humankind’s natural instincts.
“If You Go Away” - A meditation on the nature and form of Death.
“That It Might Save, Or Drown Them” - A comparison of the decay of a relationship to driftwood on a lonely beach.
FAVORITES:
“Gold Leaf” - An animal skull leads to a contemplation of humankind’s natural instincts.
“If You Go Away” - A meditation on the nature and form of Death.
“That It Might Save, Or Drown Them” - A comparison of the decay of a relationship to driftwood on a lonely beach.
February 20, 2018
Here we have a whirlwind of mindful themes and conjunctions: gratitude and despair, hope and suffering, debt and freedom. This lively collection wrestles with being half-empty -- the revelation that redemption is not possible, but you still have to sit with a life force, make do with your flesh.
There's something uplifting about knowing/understanding the depth of your despair. Is hope a star, waiting for us to calculate its light years? It isn't an immutable beacon, says the wind. It comes and goes.
I still don't "get" prose-poetry. Sometimes contemporary verse feels like it's all written by the same person, splicing sentences and line breaks onto single pages and tweets. Sometimes I yearn for a longer, complex narrative poem. What is taken to be the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings today, is more of the same spoken rhythm. In "If you will, I will", the speaker fancies "a wreckage I can manage myself". A few lines down, the speaker says "I'll never stop courting recklessness" -- a kind of bizarre game with a self-destructive bent. The poem's familiar intimacy comes from the speaker's "distracted" tug-job like rhythm: "intimacy seems nothing more, anymore, than / a form of letting what's been simple enough become difficult, / because now less far. The opening "urgency" evolves into a pornographic cleansing ritual. As the speaker "gets harder", the aim is to climax, with a little help from this male friend. Finally, the sense of an ending is ambiguous, as we learn there may not be another "he", just the speaker's italicised self, a fashioned mirror.
There's something uplifting about knowing/understanding the depth of your despair. Is hope a star, waiting for us to calculate its light years? It isn't an immutable beacon, says the wind. It comes and goes.
I still don't "get" prose-poetry. Sometimes contemporary verse feels like it's all written by the same person, splicing sentences and line breaks onto single pages and tweets. Sometimes I yearn for a longer, complex narrative poem. What is taken to be the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings today, is more of the same spoken rhythm. In "If you will, I will", the speaker fancies "a wreckage I can manage myself". A few lines down, the speaker says "I'll never stop courting recklessness" -- a kind of bizarre game with a self-destructive bent. The poem's familiar intimacy comes from the speaker's "distracted" tug-job like rhythm: "intimacy seems nothing more, anymore, than / a form of letting what's been simple enough become difficult, / because now less far. The opening "urgency" evolves into a pornographic cleansing ritual. As the speaker "gets harder", the aim is to climax, with a little help from this male friend. Finally, the sense of an ending is ambiguous, as we learn there may not be another "he", just the speaker's italicised self, a fashioned mirror.
January 28, 2019
Carl Phillips’ new book of poems, WILD IS THE WIND, reminds me of a quote: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Writing about poetry? Even harder.
Cliché? Perhaps. Yet trying to describe why these poems MOVE ME upside-down-‘n’-sideways? Impossible. Love them already.
I could tell my favorites — “Monomoy” and title poem “Wild Is The Wind.” Though that may change another day. Yes, I’ll be rereading them.
____________________________________
“....If I refuse, increasingly, to explain, isn’t/
explanation, at the end of the day, what the sturdier/
truths most resist?....”**
_____________________________________
JUST BUY THE BOOK — paper, not electronic —and read it slowly. So many readers claim they love poetry — but never buy poetry books. You must own poems, and reread them, to know them. Read ‘em early: read ‘em often.
One last suggestion. Do read “Monomoy” at least 3x. I’ll tell you where to look, but will never presume to imagine what you’ll find. Such a reductive way to share words, “explaining” a rich poem.
You’re welcome. Dive in.
__________________________
* Source attributed to many: jury’s out.
** “Wild Is The Wind,” Carl Philips. Excerpt.
Cliché? Perhaps. Yet trying to describe why these poems MOVE ME upside-down-‘n’-sideways? Impossible. Love them already.
I could tell my favorites — “Monomoy” and title poem “Wild Is The Wind.” Though that may change another day. Yes, I’ll be rereading them.
____________________________________
“....If I refuse, increasingly, to explain, isn’t/
explanation, at the end of the day, what the sturdier/
truths most resist?....”**
_____________________________________
JUST BUY THE BOOK — paper, not electronic —and read it slowly. So many readers claim they love poetry — but never buy poetry books. You must own poems, and reread them, to know them. Read ‘em early: read ‘em often.
One last suggestion. Do read “Monomoy” at least 3x. I’ll tell you where to look, but will never presume to imagine what you’ll find. Such a reductive way to share words, “explaining” a rich poem.
You’re welcome. Dive in.
__________________________
* Source attributed to many: jury’s out.
** “Wild Is The Wind,” Carl Philips. Excerpt.
April 9, 2020
"One isn’t quite sure what engages Phillips more – the real woods, or the idea of them."
"Carl Phillips’s poetry makes the case that poetry’s task is not to be a mirror for what is...but a way of refracting the light."
It's hard to settle, except temperamentally, on the subject of these poems, despite, in truth, being about no particular subject at all, the Subject that precedes what can be talked about. Phillips is a poet of pauses, these poems often reading like a Nathaniel Hawthorne sentence run through a Metaphysicalizing filter. You might say there's an irony to so much pausing in a collection with the word wild in the title. But wild is not the adjective for anything unrestrained here. Here, wild is the wild you find in temperare, the Latin root of temperamental: "to mix in due proportion, modify, blend; restrain oneself." The wind like the mind like the comma, blends.
"Carl Phillips’s poetry makes the case that poetry’s task is not to be a mirror for what is...but a way of refracting the light."
It's hard to settle, except temperamentally, on the subject of these poems, despite, in truth, being about no particular subject at all, the Subject that precedes what can be talked about. Phillips is a poet of pauses, these poems often reading like a Nathaniel Hawthorne sentence run through a Metaphysicalizing filter. You might say there's an irony to so much pausing in a collection with the word wild in the title. But wild is not the adjective for anything unrestrained here. Here, wild is the wild you find in temperare, the Latin root of temperamental: "to mix in due proportion, modify, blend; restrain oneself." The wind like the mind like the comma, blends.
November 26, 2023
“What has restlessness been for?”
I’m enamored by Carl. His grasp of craft, of syntax, is just mind-boggling. His poems are enigmatic, but ever-engaging. Sometimes idk what the fuck he’s goin on about tbh. Sometimes I’m not even sure if he Knows entirely. But I keep circling back to see if I can piece something together. Something I missed the first time around. That, to me, is the sign of great writing. And this book is chock full of it.
My only critique: he comes across as a bit too polite sometimes for my taste. Too composed. Careful in his craft. I almost want him to throw caution to the wind sometimes. I wanna see his inner diva! I know he has one. But then again, maybe I’m asking too much from Carl... He is who he is. And it’s beautiful! But I def need to read some Sylvia Plath or Frank O’Hara after this.
(also my favs are as follows: Courtship, Several Birds In The Hand But The Rest Go Free, Rockabye, Gently Though Gentle, Craft and Vision)
I’m enamored by Carl. His grasp of craft, of syntax, is just mind-boggling. His poems are enigmatic, but ever-engaging. Sometimes idk what the fuck he’s goin on about tbh. Sometimes I’m not even sure if he Knows entirely. But I keep circling back to see if I can piece something together. Something I missed the first time around. That, to me, is the sign of great writing. And this book is chock full of it.
My only critique: he comes across as a bit too polite sometimes for my taste. Too composed. Careful in his craft. I almost want him to throw caution to the wind sometimes. I wanna see his inner diva! I know he has one. But then again, maybe I’m asking too much from Carl... He is who he is. And it’s beautiful! But I def need to read some Sylvia Plath or Frank O’Hara after this.
(also my favs are as follows: Courtship, Several Birds In The Hand But The Rest Go Free, Rockabye, Gently Though Gentle, Craft and Vision)
February 3, 2018
“But what hasn’t been damaged? History here means a history of storms rushing the trees for so long, their bowed shapes seem a kind of star - worth trusting, I mean, as in how the helmsman, steering home, knows what star to lean on.” - SWIMMING
“Don’t you see how you’ve burnt almost all of it, all the tenderness, away, someone screams to someone else, in public - and looking elsewhere, we walk quickly past, as if even to have heard that much might have put us at risk of whatever fate questions like that spring from.” - MONOMOY
“Two points make a line - but so does one point, surely, when pulled at once in two opposed directions: how to turn away from what’s familiar, for example, toward what isn’t defines hope well enough, but can define, too, despair...” - THAT IT MIGHT SAVE, OR DROWN THEM
“Don’t you see how you’ve burnt almost all of it, all the tenderness, away, someone screams to someone else, in public - and looking elsewhere, we walk quickly past, as if even to have heard that much might have put us at risk of whatever fate questions like that spring from.” - MONOMOY
“Two points make a line - but so does one point, surely, when pulled at once in two opposed directions: how to turn away from what’s familiar, for example, toward what isn’t defines hope well enough, but can define, too, despair...” - THAT IT MIGHT SAVE, OR DROWN THEM
April 11, 2018
Phillips is certainly very talented with how he phrases his ideas - there was a flow from one line to another on the level of language. However, I couldn't say the same emotionally. "Wild is the Wind" left me feeling disconnected from the poems. I wasn't able to approach them and, in some cases, couldn't follow along with them. The wording that I think is Phillips' strength also got in the way sometimes, and in some cases I wondered what the reason, if any, for his stylistic choices were. I wasn't left with an overall impression of the collection, which was the most worrying, and almost all the poems left me unchanged. Perhaps I read this incorrectly - that is, didn't take the time or wasn't as patient as I ideally should've been. It's probably something wrong on my end if I couldn't appreciate an acclaimed poet, or see what was so spectacular about his work.
July 9, 2018
Don't you know you're
Life itself
Like a leaf clings
To the tree
Oh my darling,
Cling to me
For we're like creatures
Of the wind
Wild is the wind
Wild is the wind
You
Touch me
I hear the sound
Of mandolins
You
Kiss me
With your kiss
by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington
The title made popular first by Johnny Mathis and then into stellar status by David Bowie
Phillips' book of poems takes the heart through the physics of the foils, drag, and speed of love. He points the sail not too close to the wind, but shows us the map to direct ourselves. Don't hesitate. Don't trust your memory of loss or astronomy. Rather than the kite of the sail be a swallow tailed kite of your life.
Our time on this earth is only a moment, I bought two - one to carry and allow the unsacred dirt of my days, dog tail the pages, and one I gave to my sister who needed the joy.
Bravo
Life itself
Like a leaf clings
To the tree
Oh my darling,
Cling to me
For we're like creatures
Of the wind
Wild is the wind
Wild is the wind
You
Touch me
I hear the sound
Of mandolins
You
Kiss me
With your kiss
by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington
The title made popular first by Johnny Mathis and then into stellar status by David Bowie
Phillips' book of poems takes the heart through the physics of the foils, drag, and speed of love. He points the sail not too close to the wind, but shows us the map to direct ourselves. Don't hesitate. Don't trust your memory of loss or astronomy. Rather than the kite of the sail be a swallow tailed kite of your life.
Our time on this earth is only a moment, I bought two - one to carry and allow the unsacred dirt of my days, dog tail the pages, and one I gave to my sister who needed the joy.
Bravo
September 13, 2018
I find something in Carl Phillips's poems that says to others, "This is how to achieve what you are seeking through poetry." Many contemporary poets string together casual but carefully crafted phrases that seem unrelated, but that in some deep sense tell a story. Phillips seems to make that real, whereas others are just mostly off virtuosic displays of language. Phillips doesn't indulge in lot of modifiers or other scene-painting, but knows how to craft the fumbling, ambivalent phrases of everyday life, such as "more often than not," into lyricism. The poems are worth savoring slowly (I admit I did). Most are short, making them fast reading but reinforcing their richness. I find a simple, short poem such as "Gold Leaf" a deep commentary on my own life. I will definitely check out some of his Phillips's other books.
December 2, 2019
4.5/5
jesus what a mastery of language.
Reconnaissance really didn't resonate with me but i'm so glad i gave carl phillips another chance here. so many poems in here are just STUNNING. they capture something about life that i can't even put my finger on but reading them gives me this cool & weird deja-vu feeling, but also a feeling of being understood, idek. i love the emphasis on memory in this book as well.
favs:
- Courtship
- Brothers in Arms
- Meditation: On Being a Mystery to Onself
- Musculature
- The Distance and the Spoils
- Not The Waves As They Make Their Way Forward
- Stray
- The Dark No Softer Than It Was Before
- What I See Is The Light Falling All Around Us
- If You Go Away (!!!)
- Monomoy
- Wild is the Wind (!!!)
one of my favorites:
"His face was a festival. Inside it,
as if helplessness remained
one of the few things left worth
fretting for, making some kind of
show of, whatever lies
half between, he turned,
kept turning . . . Above him, leaves
swarm the air—so it couldn't have been
past November. Most animals, smelling
death on another, back away,
as if repulsed, or frightened: the rest
come closer. It was
like that, then less so. His face
was a festival, within which—just as
tenderness is only sometimes
weakness, or how what we were
can become unrecognizable to what we are,
or think we are—leaves swarm the air."
—Revolver
jesus what a mastery of language.
Reconnaissance really didn't resonate with me but i'm so glad i gave carl phillips another chance here. so many poems in here are just STUNNING. they capture something about life that i can't even put my finger on but reading them gives me this cool & weird deja-vu feeling, but also a feeling of being understood, idek. i love the emphasis on memory in this book as well.
favs:
- Courtship
- Brothers in Arms
- Meditation: On Being a Mystery to Onself
- Musculature
- The Distance and the Spoils
- Not The Waves As They Make Their Way Forward
- Stray
- The Dark No Softer Than It Was Before
- What I See Is The Light Falling All Around Us
- If You Go Away (!!!)
- Monomoy
- Wild is the Wind (!!!)
one of my favorites:
"His face was a festival. Inside it,
as if helplessness remained
one of the few things left worth
fretting for, making some kind of
show of, whatever lies
half between, he turned,
kept turning . . . Above him, leaves
swarm the air—so it couldn't have been
past November. Most animals, smelling
death on another, back away,
as if repulsed, or frightened: the rest
come closer. It was
like that, then less so. His face
was a festival, within which—just as
tenderness is only sometimes
weakness, or how what we were
can become unrecognizable to what we are,
or think we are—leaves swarm the air."
—Revolver
June 17, 2023
I'm convinced that reading Carl Phillips' poetry has been one of the most comforting things that has happened to me this year. This collection holds the experiential intelligence of a lifetime of love, philosophy, language, sex, and loss, all packaged in abstract, image-rich prose. The poems in Wild Is the Wind navigate the infallibility of memory and language, the tensions between letting go and holding on, the grandiosity of the natural world, the fragility of aging bodies, nostalgia and regret bound up in images of past selves, and woundedness, in all its forms.
"- So here we are again, one-handedly fingering the puckered edges of the exit wounds memory leaves behind, he said, and he tossed his leash made of starts, then tightened it, around the antlers it seems I forget, always, about having." (10, Givingly)
"- So here we are again, one-handedly fingering the puckered edges of the exit wounds memory leaves behind, he said, and he tossed his leash made of starts, then tightened it, around the antlers it seems I forget, always, about having." (10, Givingly)
November 28, 2020
"Sometimes a thing can seem star-like when it's just a star, stripped of whatever small form of joy likeness equals." (from "Stray")
Though i often found it hard to derive any explicit intention from any individual poem, I think the collection succeeds mainly w/r/t the consistent mood/tone of the speaker throughout. You can feel the speaker's struggle through varying forms of memory (recent, distant, factual, physical, etc), and how that relates to his immediate surroundings. There's just this intense sense of frustration but you're not exactly sure who or what it's directed towards
Some of my favorites from this collection: "The Sea, The Forest," "Monomoy", "The Way One Animal Trusts Another," "What the Lost Are For," "What I See is the Light Falling All Around Us," "Stray"
Though i often found it hard to derive any explicit intention from any individual poem, I think the collection succeeds mainly w/r/t the consistent mood/tone of the speaker throughout. You can feel the speaker's struggle through varying forms of memory (recent, distant, factual, physical, etc), and how that relates to his immediate surroundings. There's just this intense sense of frustration but you're not exactly sure who or what it's directed towards
Some of my favorites from this collection: "The Sea, The Forest," "Monomoy", "The Way One Animal Trusts Another," "What the Lost Are For," "What I See is the Light Falling All Around Us," "Stray"
Read
August 7, 2020The uncertainty, the exploration of how things can be what they are and are not and both and more made this collection much more challenging to read than anticipated—but those meandering, philosophical considerations were relatable (even if I lacked a concrete understanding of what prompted the thought-exercise in the first place) and the imagery stunned.
From “If You Go Away”
“ ... Behind him,
stray cabbage moths lifting from
the catalpa’s blossoms make it seem as if
one bloom had flown free
from the others, fluttering mirror from a clutch
of still ones. There’s a kind of love that
doesn’t extend itself both ways
between two people equally because it doesn’t have to.”
December 19, 2021
I was intrigued but boxed out. I couldn't get a good grip on this poetry -- the logical leaps felt like gaps. I discovered that I appreciate specificity and clear voice in a poem. I want to feel someone who wants to tell me something about a particular strangeness in the world, rather than capture an inner (rambling) dialogue that I'm still not privy to after reading. I liked "If you Go Away" for the lucidity of the wolf. I also enjoyed the line in "If You Will, I Will": "Intimacy seems nothing more, anymore than/ a form of letting what's been simple enough become difficult/ because now less far."
May 16, 2018
April was National Poetry month, and both of my elementary school aged children explored the genre with their teachers. And for an unknown reason this slim book of poetry arrived on my hold shelf at the library. Poetry has never been something I devoured in reading material, but this was a pleasant book to explore more of the genre. Each poem is two pages or less, so it's perfect to pick up at the end of the day or when you want to squeeze in 15 minutes of reading. Overall I liked the nature theme throughout the poems, but they left me with a sense of being dark and heavy.
December 3, 2022
“crossing”
“from a bonfire”
“wild is the wind”
“several birds in hand but the rest go free”
this one definitely felt more messy at other times than the phillips i’ve read this year, which works incredibly for my favs listed above but others didn’t land. i was much more drawn to the exploration of memory than that of history, but that boat/shipwreck imagery was awesome and very affective for me
“from a bonfire”
“wild is the wind”
“several birds in hand but the rest go free”
this one definitely felt more messy at other times than the phillips i’ve read this year, which works incredibly for my favs listed above but others didn’t land. i was much more drawn to the exploration of memory than that of history, but that boat/shipwreck imagery was awesome and very affective for me
December 8, 2019
So poignant - some of these poems pull at the heart strongly. Each one has multiple layers of meaning, and it would take many readings to extract them all. (Or perhaps they are inexhaustible?) I look forward to visiting these poems again, and again, and again …
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