Riding Westward: Poems - Hardcover

Phillips, Carl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374250030 ISBN 13: 9780374250034

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006

Synopsis

The singer turning thisand that way, as if watching the song itself
--the words to the song--leave him, as he
lets each go, the wind carrying most of it,
some of the words, falling, settling into
instead that larger darkness, where the smaller

darknesses that our lives were lie softly down."
--from "Riding Westward"

What happens when the world as we've known it becomes divided, when the mind becomes less able--or less willing--to distinguish reality from what is desired? In Riding Westward, Carl Phillips wields his celebrated gifts for syntax and imagery that are unmistakably his own--speculative, athletic, immediate--as he confronts moral crisis. What is the difference, he asks, between good and evil, cruelty and instruction, risk and trust? Against the backdrop of the natural world, Phillips pitches the restlessness of what it means to be human, as he at once deepens and extends a meditation on that space where the forces of will and imagination collide with sexual and moral conduct.

About this title

About the Author

Carl Phillips is the author of seven previous books of poems, including The Rest of Love, a National Book Award finalist; Rock Harbor; and The Tether, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. The recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, he teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reviews

The prolific, always articulate Phillips attained late-'90s acclaim for a series of books (among them Pastoral and From the Devotions) whose intricate clauses and mythic topics followed the passions and trials of physical embodiment and erotic (especially same-sex) love. In recent years, he has sought clearer, more various styles in which to take on the same concerns: never more than in this eighth collection, which proposes "cruelty as a means of understanding... love's conditions—not clear,/ but clearer," and wants us to admit, "that's/ how we like it, I'll break your heart, break mine." Short sentences mixed with long, arresting confessions mixed with hard explanations, make parts of the love poems and antilove poems as memorable as ever. Phillips's command of syntax, while changing favored forms, remains, as does his acquaintance with the knots and contradictions of desire: "Trust me," one poem asks, "the way one animal trusts another." (May)
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Phillips' eighth poetry collection showcases his distinct philosophical bent, penchant for classical allusions, and shift-gear, em-dash syntax. This is a tidal collection with poems that are wavelike in their formation, breaking and falling abruptly or gently rinsing the shore, all in a dance of creation and erasure. The poems' speakers question cruelty, desire, regret, and possibility, often through interaction with the natural world, whether a sacred grove or a mutilated bird. Phillips' masterful ordering of the poems evokes connection through themes and imagery, and produces an overall sensation of rhythmic rising and falling. Although Phillips' poems are challenging, their fearless questioning and fierce exploration prod the reader to think. They also, occasionally, give up such simple and rewarding nuggets of wisdom as "some mistakes, given time, don't seem mistakes-- / I'm counting on that; others though perhaps / a little bit still worth being sorry for, / lose force." Riding Westward offers an expansion of mind that can only be compared to riding out into the boundaryless field of vision our Western plains offer. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374250030
• ISBN 13: 9780374250034
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64