 
 
From the publisher:
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 inside 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.
Review:
I learned of Carl Phillips when I was still in college. My poetry professor contributed a forward to his first poetry collection and used one of his poems while teaching class.
I remember holding a copy of In the Blood in my department library. I didn’t think to buy the book at the time because money and time and coursework and blah blah blah. I was also working two jobs and doing the usual college things so how could I have known?
I have few regrets in life but among those is not picking up In the Blood when I had the chance. I had the illusion of abundance, if not of money, at least of time and opportunity. I missed my shot at owning this now out-of-print book and can only read it on Google books, where thankfully, a scanned copy can be found.
Now, 20-plus books later. I’ve quietly consumed each one – some on airplanes on the way to one place or another, most at night, before I fall asleep. They populate my dreams and sometimes, their influence is felt in the small things I write. I’ve woken up more than a few times with one of Philips’ collections wrapped up in the blankets.
One of my favorites, The Rest of Love is a meditation on what remains after love, or the rest of love. Whether it’s the death of the speaker’s dog or the dissolution of a relationship, there is something after – the treachery of memory, the echoes of touches and promises that are no longer our entitlement.
Phillips’ poems, first and foremost, are little puzzles you unravel, where the solution, even when they take shape, can never be known with certainty. Phillips 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 in those references is where his imagination is filtered, and the reader is asked to keep up, simply tag along as the speaker 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 it is manipulated 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 incidentals. He speaks of 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 falls to his knees 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 identities 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.
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