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The Rest of Love: Poems
Striking new poems from a writer whose "lyric gift . . . outstrips all diversionary maneuvers." (Carol Moldaw, The Antioch Review )
The light, for as far as
I can see, is that of any number of late
afternoons I remember still: how the light
seemed a bell; how it seemed I'd been living
insider it, waiting - I'd heard all about
that one clear note it gives.
--from "Late Apollo III"
In The Rest of Love , his seventh book, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe: Aren't we always trying, Phillips asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly, the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control; following his impeccable interior logic, "passionately austere" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post Book World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire-physical, emotional, and spiritual.
The Rest of Love is a 2004 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.
The light, for as far as
I can see, is that of any number of late
afternoons I remember still: how the light
seemed a bell; how it seemed I'd been living
insider it, waiting - I'd heard all about
that one clear note it gives.
--from "Late Apollo III"
In The Rest of Love , his seventh book, Carl Phillips examines the conflict between belief and disbelief, and our will to believe: Aren't we always trying, Phillips asks, to contain or to stave off facing up to, even briefly, the hard truths we're nevertheless attracted to? Phillips's signature terse line and syntax enact this constant tension between abandon and control; following his impeccable interior logic, "passionately austere" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post Book World), Phillips plumbs the myths we make and return to in the name of desire-physical, emotional, and spiritual.
The Rest of Love is a 2004 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.
70 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 2004
11 people are currently reading
287 people want to read
About the author
Carl Phillips
88 books207 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 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 7, 2012
I saw Carl Phillips read in Milwaukee in, I believe, 04, and I remember greatly liking his poems, so much so that I purchased this book, The Rest of Love. I chose this book in particular because I really admired the poem "White Dog", which is found in this book. "white Dog" is about Phillips painful experience following the death of his beloved dog. There is one part of the poem I particularly like:
"I know, released, she won't come back.
This is different from letting what,
already, we count as lost go. It is nothing
like that."
I love the comparison to the word 'release' and 'letting go'. The difference is in the empowerment in the act of releasing. It is time to go. I release you. I know you won't come back, and I choose to accept that.
The poems in this book are about love in some way, but not the magical type of love, which is fulfilling and rewarding. This type of love is unfulfilled and unrewarded. I sense some rejection and perhaps unrequited love in his poems. It's interesting that the first poem "Custom" says this about love: "about love, a sudden decision not to, to pretend instead to a kind / of choice." This poem like many of the poems of this book is very enigmatic. To me, the poem is about a dramatic ending of a relationship, which was reminiscent of the brutal endings of relationships of the past. Thus, it seems only natural to decide not to love anymore, but I like how Phillips points out that when we do this, we "pretend instead to a kind of choice," special emphasis on 'pretend' because love is not a choice.
Phillips also speaks frequently of God and spirituality, sometimes poking fun of certain avid conceptualizations of God, sometimes questioning the truth behind God and the soul. I feel like Phillips may have de-converted (what's the opposite of convert?) from Christianity. It's as though he feels like God isn't there. I don't know how I feel about that, because for me, God is always there in the trees, in nature, in ourselves. Thus, there are a few poems that I disagree with Phillips' philosophy, which seems so depressing and nihilistic at times.
What's neat about Phillips, because you don't really expect it is how Allen Ginsberg he is about guys. Yes, Phillips is a gay poet, and he speaks of his relations with men freely. Phillips is sometimes erotic, with words like ass, hole, tear, leather, strap, shirtless, but I feel like the poems aren't meant to turn you on because these sexual passages feel lacking in passion. It's more like a tenderness, a careful caressing kind of sex. It's weird. I can't feel passion, but he writes of straps and whips. It's slightly uncanny.
My favorite poem of the book is "Fervor". Perhaps this explains my feeling above. Fervor is passion by definition, but when he writes about the guy removing his shirt, his shoes, opening his pants and him not wearing anything underneath, Phillips writes:
"I did what I do--
pretended to be a fallen gate,
its hinges gone"
So this is supposed to be fervor? To fall down like a rusted old gate? For me, I feel like there is something missing. Like love isn't there, but why? Maybe I'm just reading too much of my self into it. Who knows? What I do know is I love that poem, because I feel so much emotion in it. Like, sadness, and desire, and emptiness, and abandonment, and nostalgia, and wanting more.
All in all, many of the poems do not resonate with me, hence the 3 stars. Some of the syntax feels strange, and some of the lines of the poem feel too random. For example, in the poem "In Love" it goes:
"Here, when the light deepens,
when they say
The dark is taking hold,
and mean a gradualness
like that of discipline where,
once abandon figured,
the men who--all day, a month now--
have worked the orchard
leave the orchard behind;
they have left already."
What does that mean? I tried to understand it, but it's too much for me. I wish there was a place online where Phillips explains his poems. I feel like a deeper understanding of the poems' backgrounds would better serve the reader. In the meantime, we go without.
Finally, I want to express how much I love the title, The Rest of Love. We know what Love is, but what about the rest of it? What about the deep, dark, terrifying aspects of it? Or perhaps, it means a rest from love. There is love, and it weakens us, and so we have to take a break from it and find ourselves, and understand what it is that got us loving, so that we can better strengthen ourselves for the future, and figure out how to keep love from causing so much pain.
"I know, released, she won't come back.
This is different from letting what,
already, we count as lost go. It is nothing
like that."
I love the comparison to the word 'release' and 'letting go'. The difference is in the empowerment in the act of releasing. It is time to go. I release you. I know you won't come back, and I choose to accept that.
The poems in this book are about love in some way, but not the magical type of love, which is fulfilling and rewarding. This type of love is unfulfilled and unrewarded. I sense some rejection and perhaps unrequited love in his poems. It's interesting that the first poem "Custom" says this about love: "about love, a sudden decision not to, to pretend instead to a kind / of choice." This poem like many of the poems of this book is very enigmatic. To me, the poem is about a dramatic ending of a relationship, which was reminiscent of the brutal endings of relationships of the past. Thus, it seems only natural to decide not to love anymore, but I like how Phillips points out that when we do this, we "pretend instead to a kind of choice," special emphasis on 'pretend' because love is not a choice.
Phillips also speaks frequently of God and spirituality, sometimes poking fun of certain avid conceptualizations of God, sometimes questioning the truth behind God and the soul. I feel like Phillips may have de-converted (what's the opposite of convert?) from Christianity. It's as though he feels like God isn't there. I don't know how I feel about that, because for me, God is always there in the trees, in nature, in ourselves. Thus, there are a few poems that I disagree with Phillips' philosophy, which seems so depressing and nihilistic at times.
What's neat about Phillips, because you don't really expect it is how Allen Ginsberg he is about guys. Yes, Phillips is a gay poet, and he speaks of his relations with men freely. Phillips is sometimes erotic, with words like ass, hole, tear, leather, strap, shirtless, but I feel like the poems aren't meant to turn you on because these sexual passages feel lacking in passion. It's more like a tenderness, a careful caressing kind of sex. It's weird. I can't feel passion, but he writes of straps and whips. It's slightly uncanny.
My favorite poem of the book is "Fervor". Perhaps this explains my feeling above. Fervor is passion by definition, but when he writes about the guy removing his shirt, his shoes, opening his pants and him not wearing anything underneath, Phillips writes:
"I did what I do--
pretended to be a fallen gate,
its hinges gone"
So this is supposed to be fervor? To fall down like a rusted old gate? For me, I feel like there is something missing. Like love isn't there, but why? Maybe I'm just reading too much of my self into it. Who knows? What I do know is I love that poem, because I feel so much emotion in it. Like, sadness, and desire, and emptiness, and abandonment, and nostalgia, and wanting more.
All in all, many of the poems do not resonate with me, hence the 3 stars. Some of the syntax feels strange, and some of the lines of the poem feel too random. For example, in the poem "In Love" it goes:
"Here, when the light deepens,
when they say
The dark is taking hold,
and mean a gradualness
like that of discipline where,
once abandon figured,
the men who--all day, a month now--
have worked the orchard
leave the orchard behind;
they have left already."
What does that mean? I tried to understand it, but it's too much for me. I wish there was a place online where Phillips explains his poems. I feel like a deeper understanding of the poems' backgrounds would better serve the reader. In the meantime, we go without.
Finally, I want to express how much I love the title, The Rest of Love. We know what Love is, but what about the rest of it? What about the deep, dark, terrifying aspects of it? Or perhaps, it means a rest from love. There is love, and it weakens us, and so we have to take a break from it and find ourselves, and understand what it is that got us loving, so that we can better strengthen ourselves for the future, and figure out how to keep love from causing so much pain.
January 13, 2023
A new favourite for sure.
Earthstar,
seastar -
more dark than either - he mistakes me.
Lies beneath me.
Has arched already himself up in
such a way.
He is
- what? an instance of glory
outglorying the bearer of it?
Token when it conquers
that for which it stood?
Those who give without receipt,
without even the expectation of receipt -
I am not among them.
As if having spoken, and
now could watch the words find, spatter-like, his chest,
a brightness that
depends finally,
any shield,
- a wall across which, random, off of water, light
shifts,
reflected.
What if the will
were husk entirely
and the husk,
breakable,
were broken open, to
where the seeds are? what
then? what would the seeds
be?
A cathedral, falling.
One of those doves that, in the Greek original, the sufferer's bow brings down.
O him, beneath me.
My favourite poems from this collection included:
Custom
Tower Window
Trophy
The Rest of Love
Like Stitches Where the Moths Have Made an Opening
Late Apollo
The Way As Promised
North
Hymns and Fragments
If A Wilderness
Sunset with Severed Head of Orpheus
Pleasure
Here, On Earth
Anthem
Like Cuttings For A Wreath of Praise and Ransom
Fray
Earthstar,
seastar -
more dark than either - he mistakes me.
Lies beneath me.
Has arched already himself up in
such a way.
He is
- what? an instance of glory
outglorying the bearer of it?
Token when it conquers
that for which it stood?
Those who give without receipt,
without even the expectation of receipt -
I am not among them.
As if having spoken, and
now could watch the words find, spatter-like, his chest,
a brightness that
depends finally,
any shield,
- a wall across which, random, off of water, light
shifts,
reflected.
What if the will
were husk entirely
and the husk,
breakable,
were broken open, to
where the seeds are? what
then? what would the seeds
be?
A cathedral, falling.
One of those doves that, in the Greek original, the sufferer's bow brings down.
O him, beneath me.
My favourite poems from this collection included:
Custom
Tower Window
Trophy
The Rest of Love
Like Stitches Where the Moths Have Made an Opening
Late Apollo
The Way As Promised
North
Hymns and Fragments
If A Wilderness
Sunset with Severed Head of Orpheus
Pleasure
Here, On Earth
Anthem
Like Cuttings For A Wreath of Praise and Ransom
Fray
January 14, 2020
4.5....key takeaways: mystery, erotic and wonder.
September 16, 2022
To be restive in starry night, entangled in the mire of lust and love; to be object and glass mirror of sand. One becomes intrigue in fetid patience; of subjective realities and objective experience (as in platonic forms). Gathering these stipulations that egress and become expatiated; like almost so many tentacle-limb of fire and reprieve. A love is lost and received into the fetid womb of men.
July 22, 2024
I loved this. It reminded me of Christine Garren, who reminded me of Thomas James, so that I now have a little interrelated trifecta of favorite poets, or favorite collections.
July 27, 2023
So that each
is its own, now--each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren't
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes soft.
There are those
whom no amount of patience looks likely
to improve ever, I always said, meaning
gift is random,
assigned here,
here withheld--almost always
correctly
as it's turned out: how your hands clear
easily the wreckage;
how you stand--like a building for a time condemned,
then deemed historic. Yes. You
will be saved.
is its own, now--each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren't
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes soft.
There are those
whom no amount of patience looks likely
to improve ever, I always said, meaning
gift is random,
assigned here,
here withheld--almost always
correctly
as it's turned out: how your hands clear
easily the wreckage;
how you stand--like a building for a time condemned,
then deemed historic. Yes. You
will be saved.
August 14, 2023
It seems strange to refer to a poet as "reliable" but Carl Phillips does seem like a safe bet if I'm at the library and looking for something/someone to read. His verses here, likewise, are consistent: deep ideas about love, connection, things bigger than us, the bigger part that exists in us, something akin to God but different, tied to belief and desire -- articulated in confident lines that allude to a mystery without sounding pompous or twee. ("The younger one is almost handsome, a star / already, going down.") Phillips' turns of phrase suggest the ineffable while allowing us to make the final leap, if we choose to do so, somehow assisted and all by ourselves. I liked that his handful of notes at the back clue us into his sources: Anton Chekhov, John Donne, Ivan Turgenev, the Bible, and Sophocles, to name the best known. You lose nothing by not knowing such things. Yet how nice to be shown. Flipping to the front end of the book, I discover he's actually translated Sophocles, too. Specifically, "Philoctetes" -- a drama that has inspired versions from a wild array of other writers: Andre Gide, John Jesurun, and Heiner Muller.
January 11, 2020
My favourite poems in this collection were the most accessible. That isn't always the case with me (in Susan Howe's Souls of the Labadie Tract, it's the abstract pantomime of the titular poem that I keep coming back to). But in this case, it was Phillips most visceral flirtations that drew me in, flirtations with God, death, and unnamed lovers, delivered in a linguistic and symbolic syllabary borrowed from epic poetry, Western and BDSM.
Phillips is apparently noted as much for his syntactic jiggery-pokery as anything, however (being compared to Manley Hopkins), and this left me a bit cold. The emphasis on drawing out meaning across the course of long sentences in itself didn't bother me so much as the frequency with which I felt I lacked a vantage point from which to interpret said meaning. This is probably my fault for being lazy, but even so it hindered my enjoyment--with no obvious emotional core to anchor myself on, I often felt to fatigued too attempt a second reading.
At its best, brilliantly fresh and subversive. I just wish I had the attention necessary for the rest.
Phillips is apparently noted as much for his syntactic jiggery-pokery as anything, however (being compared to Manley Hopkins), and this left me a bit cold. The emphasis on drawing out meaning across the course of long sentences in itself didn't bother me so much as the frequency with which I felt I lacked a vantage point from which to interpret said meaning. This is probably my fault for being lazy, but even so it hindered my enjoyment--with no obvious emotional core to anchor myself on, I often felt to fatigued too attempt a second reading.
At its best, brilliantly fresh and subversive. I just wish I had the attention necessary for the rest.
February 11, 2018
The first Phillips book I read, Double Shadow, came out 7 years later than this one. That book sold me on him forever. These poems are just as well-crafted, but more mysterious (to me) and more strikingly erotic. Many of these were intriguing, painterly and full of nuance and shadow, but left me feeling like a particularly unintelligent reader. Instead of ruining the book for me, like some poets do who seem to delight in being obscure and difficult, this collection made me want to try harder, listen more closely. Not all of them are like that - "Anthem" is so masterful I have to just say READ IT. There were poems I walked away from, pondered, came back to, and left again with a lingering feeling -- not often fully understanding, but still appreciating what stuck with me: longing, or sadness, or wonder -- or all three at once.
November 8, 2023
"I look for omens everywhere, because they are everywhere to be found. They come to me like strays, like the damaged"
"The crowd equals what's forgettable."
"Is this perfection or the cost of it?"
"I am no less grateful for the berries than for the thorns that are meant, I think, to help."
"Listen, what makes the truth so difficult is also what draws us to it: how clear it is."
"Not memory; not the naming—which, if a form of remembering, is also a form of to own, a possession"
"Instinct is different from to understand."
"It's a human need, to give to shapelessness a form."
Favorites: Tower Window, Trophy I & II, Late Apollo III, All It Takes, White Dog, Fray
"The crowd equals what's forgettable."
"Is this perfection or the cost of it?"
"I am no less grateful for the berries than for the thorns that are meant, I think, to help."
"Listen, what makes the truth so difficult is also what draws us to it: how clear it is."
"Not memory; not the naming—which, if a form of remembering, is also a form of to own, a possession"
"Instinct is different from to understand."
"It's a human need, to give to shapelessness a form."
Favorites: Tower Window, Trophy I & II, Late Apollo III, All It Takes, White Dog, Fray
August 27, 2021
I can't read the poetry of Carl Phillips without feeling it in my body. A poem like "Fervor" leaves marks. I love the book's ambivalent title, *The Rest of Love*, which draws to mind both langour and lull but also a feeling of ongoingness, of something that comes after.
These poems offer challenges to reads but the spellbinding world Phillips creates in his poem is akin to that of the lotus eaters.
These poems offer challenges to reads but the spellbinding world Phillips creates in his poem is akin to that of the lotus eaters.
January 13, 2026
After reading Phillips's craft book, My Trade Is Mystery, I wandered to my bookshelves and found this bittersweet collection. The word "ache" came to mind throughout. The poem "Tower Window" has stayed with me for several days after reading it. The knowing that we're in the worst of it, that we've come to the end.
The syntax of these poems is chewy and forced me to go slowly, to savor and reread.
The syntax of these poems is chewy and forced me to go slowly, to savor and reread.
April 15, 2021
Carl Phillips is a poet that has to grow on you. My first read through I stumbled through, but as I reread it I really focused on the line structure. Phillips has an interesting style that made me fall in love with a few of the poems in this collection.
May 27, 2022
Straining, trying to understand desire, trying to understand belief.
"a human need
to give to shapelessness
a form."
I feel I comprehend fragments only, yet the whole pulls on me, as all his later poetry does.
"a human need
to give to shapelessness
a form."
I feel I comprehend fragments only, yet the whole pulls on me, as all his later poetry does.
March 7, 2025
checked this out from the library and i must have scanned half the poems in this book so i could save them for myself. kind of collection that makes you scream and cry and throw up because you will never write poems that are this good because this man has a mastery of language and has said it all.
June 18, 2023
I struggled with this
I have a feeling that the problem might be mine, as Phillips is a well respected poet. I have read some of his selected poems and enjoyed that much more.
I have a feeling that the problem might be mine, as Phillips is a well respected poet. I have read some of his selected poems and enjoyed that much more.
December 27, 2025
brilliant !!
June 19, 2020
The Rest of Love is a meditation on what remains after love, or the rest of love. Whether it’s the death of his dog or the dissolution of a relationship, there is something after – the treachery of memory, the echoes of touch and promises that are no longer our entitlement.
Phillips’ poems, first and foremost, are little puzzles you unravel, where the solution, even when it takes shape, can never be known with certaint. He is a classicist, a translator, a teacher, and in interviews has described the influences of Thucydides and Cicero on his work, but this collection also teases John Donne and the metaphysical poets. He is one of the most allusive poets I’ve ever read.
...First always
comes the ability to believe, and then the need to.
The ancient Greeks; the Romans after. How they
made of love a wild god; of fidelity - a small,
a tame one.
-"All It Takes"
Most of the time, he doesn’t provide a key within his poetry for the allusions he uses. His poems are meant to be read as works in themselves, the allusions more like amusements he adds for his own pleasure, because it is where his imagination is filtered, and the reader to keep up, just tag along as he processes the world. For example, you cannot read the poem “North” and not sense that Phillips is mining some classical association, but he leaves you with it to work out on your own.
The only thing between the reader and the image is syntax and he manipulates it until you don’t know if a word is being used as a noun, a gerund,or a verb because any way you turn the word, it feeds a different flavor into the meaning of the text. As a student of the Roman rhetoricians, Phillips uses the structure of language to craft meaning. It doesn’t condition your reading – you can also remain blissfully unaware of the particulars. But if you are one for details, there are more nuances in his use of language than can be explored in one sitting.
He’s a black poet. He’s a gay poet. He is also the poet of universals. And of the particular. He talks about speaks of his horses racing across the landscape in the same sentence (if you can call it a sentence) as Achilles, of being a rusted gate even as he talks about falling to his knee before his lover. There is this tension between the human and humanity, between the quotidian and the divine and the line is not there for you to define, but to observe, absorb and experience, like a caress. His poetry flourishes in the interstices of his identity but also ties them to the classic traditions, asserting his right to be a part of this dialogue.
And if it is his right to mine that tradition, it is our right, as readers, to take our place as well.
Phillips’ poems, first and foremost, are little puzzles you unravel, where the solution, even when it takes shape, can never be known with certaint. He is a classicist, a translator, a teacher, and in interviews has described the influences of Thucydides and Cicero on his work, but this collection also teases John Donne and the metaphysical poets. He is one of the most allusive poets I’ve ever read.
...First always
comes the ability to believe, and then the need to.
The ancient Greeks; the Romans after. How they
made of love a wild god; of fidelity - a small,
a tame one.
-"All It Takes"
Most of the time, he doesn’t provide a key within his poetry for the allusions he uses. His poems are meant to be read as works in themselves, the allusions more like amusements he adds for his own pleasure, because it is where his imagination is filtered, and the reader to keep up, just tag along as he processes the world. For example, you cannot read the poem “North” and not sense that Phillips is mining some classical association, but he leaves you with it to work out on your own.
The only thing between the reader and the image is syntax and he manipulates it until you don’t know if a word is being used as a noun, a gerund,or a verb because any way you turn the word, it feeds a different flavor into the meaning of the text. As a student of the Roman rhetoricians, Phillips uses the structure of language to craft meaning. It doesn’t condition your reading – you can also remain blissfully unaware of the particulars. But if you are one for details, there are more nuances in his use of language than can be explored in one sitting.
He’s a black poet. He’s a gay poet. He is also the poet of universals. And of the particular. He talks about speaks of his horses racing across the landscape in the same sentence (if you can call it a sentence) as Achilles, of being a rusted gate even as he talks about falling to his knee before his lover. There is this tension between the human and humanity, between the quotidian and the divine and the line is not there for you to define, but to observe, absorb and experience, like a caress. His poetry flourishes in the interstices of his identity but also ties them to the classic traditions, asserting his right to be a part of this dialogue.
And if it is his right to mine that tradition, it is our right, as readers, to take our place as well.
March 27, 2013
A beautiful lament addressed to a beloved. Beginning with the first poem, “Custom,” Phillips returns again and again to the moment of departure and those moments leading up to a crossing of a distance, of water, of a life. And like Orpheus in the title poem, “The Rest of Love,” he is looking back and losing everything.
Throughout his recollection, as in “All It Takes,” the poet meditates on “[t]hings invisible, / and the visible effects by which / we know them” to find the patterns, the rituals by which we exist through change. In “A Sudden Scattering of Leaves, All Gold,” he says truth is elusive in these patterns, “a hand extending at the same time as / it recedes,” and intertwined with desire, perhaps driven by it. “Late, in a Time of Splendor” speaks of desire, no matter what the patterns, their deceits, leading to a moment of sexual consummation, its own truth.
Perhaps my favorite poem of several is “Anthem,” in which the bee is trapped at the window. Here Phillips returns to the window motif of an earlier poem “The Tower,” wherein the glass, old glass, is a distortion as if looking through water. In the later poem, the glass becomes a resistance for the bee, a force that is felt but inexplicable because it also lets in the light that shows what is attainable but remains unattainable, yet we struggle toward it.
Superbly organized, this collection interweaves a longing for contact, moments of sex, and a meditation on having, never quite having, yet losing, but still having something that remains of love, much as the spirit grieves and wanders. In “Hymns and Fragments,” Phillips gives one of the best descriptions of a dying I have encountered, this “watching a harbor slowly empty of the ships it once held.” And fittingly, the last poem, “Crew,” answers the first with a pattern for struggling as rowing, and ends with “the boy at the bow” who sings:
What is dread
but that from which the soul
will be delivered?
And he is answered by his crew, so reminiscent of a Greek chorus: O what / is the soul?
Throughout his recollection, as in “All It Takes,” the poet meditates on “[t]hings invisible, / and the visible effects by which / we know them” to find the patterns, the rituals by which we exist through change. In “A Sudden Scattering of Leaves, All Gold,” he says truth is elusive in these patterns, “a hand extending at the same time as / it recedes,” and intertwined with desire, perhaps driven by it. “Late, in a Time of Splendor” speaks of desire, no matter what the patterns, their deceits, leading to a moment of sexual consummation, its own truth.
Perhaps my favorite poem of several is “Anthem,” in which the bee is trapped at the window. Here Phillips returns to the window motif of an earlier poem “The Tower,” wherein the glass, old glass, is a distortion as if looking through water. In the later poem, the glass becomes a resistance for the bee, a force that is felt but inexplicable because it also lets in the light that shows what is attainable but remains unattainable, yet we struggle toward it.
Superbly organized, this collection interweaves a longing for contact, moments of sex, and a meditation on having, never quite having, yet losing, but still having something that remains of love, much as the spirit grieves and wanders. In “Hymns and Fragments,” Phillips gives one of the best descriptions of a dying I have encountered, this “watching a harbor slowly empty of the ships it once held.” And fittingly, the last poem, “Crew,” answers the first with a pattern for struggling as rowing, and ends with “the boy at the bow” who sings:
What is dread
but that from which the soul
will be delivered?
And he is answered by his crew, so reminiscent of a Greek chorus: O what / is the soul?
January 5, 2010
If I could give this book 4 1/2 stars I would, but I can't. There's some great memorable poems in here like "Conduct" and "The Rest of Love." Also there's a great interpretation of Orpheus in this collection as well. Borrow before buying imo.
March 1, 2013
Beautiful. Challenging, but extremely rewarding.
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