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Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020
WINNER OF THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY
A new collection of poems from one of America’s most essential, celebrated, and enduring poets, Carl Phillips's Then the War
I’m a song, changing. I’m a light
rain falling through a vast
darkness toward a different
darkness.
Carl Phillips has aptly described his work as an “ongoing quest”; Then the War is the next step in that meaningful process of self-discovery for both the poet and his reader. The new poems, written in a time of rising racial conflict in the United States, with its attendant violence and uncertainty, find Phillips entering deeper into the landscape he has made his a forest of intimacy, queerness, and moral inquiry, where the farther we go, the more difficult it is to remember why or where we started.
Then the War includes a generous selection of Phillips’s work from the previous thirteen years, as well as his recent lyric prose memoir, “Among the Trees,” and his chapbook, Star Map with Action Figures .
Ultimately, Phillips refuses pessimism, arguing for tenderness and human connection as profound forces for revolution and conjuring a spell against indifference and the easy escapes of nostalgia. Then the War is luminous testimony to the power of self-reckoning and to Carl Phillips as an ever-changing, necessary voice in contemporary poetry.
A new collection of poems from one of America’s most essential, celebrated, and enduring poets, Carl Phillips's Then the War
I’m a song, changing. I’m a light
rain falling through a vast
darkness toward a different
darkness.
Carl Phillips has aptly described his work as an “ongoing quest”; Then the War is the next step in that meaningful process of self-discovery for both the poet and his reader. The new poems, written in a time of rising racial conflict in the United States, with its attendant violence and uncertainty, find Phillips entering deeper into the landscape he has made his a forest of intimacy, queerness, and moral inquiry, where the farther we go, the more difficult it is to remember why or where we started.
Then the War includes a generous selection of Phillips’s work from the previous thirteen years, as well as his recent lyric prose memoir, “Among the Trees,” and his chapbook, Star Map with Action Figures .
Ultimately, Phillips refuses pessimism, arguing for tenderness and human connection as profound forces for revolution and conjuring a spell against indifference and the easy escapes of nostalgia. Then the War is luminous testimony to the power of self-reckoning and to Carl Phillips as an ever-changing, necessary voice in contemporary poetry.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2022
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1163 people want to read
About the author
Carl Phillips
88 books203 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 77 reviews
April 4, 2024
This was such a challenge but in the best way. Poems of intimacy, self-identity, regret, and a liminal state of mind.
March 21, 2023
In the way that the German language has words for intensely specific emotions and concepts, Carl Phillips' poems capture, somehow, feelings beyond words, with words. This collection holds within it a lifetime of inexpressible memories, sorrows, desires, and moments, and yet, somehow Phillips expresses them vividly, in rich natural imagery and smart, meandering prose. I'll be returning to these poems regularly for the comfort and wisdom they give so generously.
Read
December 23, 2022I think of the word “incandescent” when I think of poetry by Carl Phillips. Something that gives off light via its own heat. As if the intensity of passion in his language lights the page. The eye Phillips casts on the human- and greater-than-human-world is brightly alert. An eye that seems directly connected to his ear. His language is vibrant, reverent, and sonically rich. Sometimes it’s playful, sometimes it’s reverent. It’s always wholly alive. What a wonderful thing to have so many new poems from Carl Phillips. As well as many of my favorites from the last decades, arranged in tighter, bolder constellations so they appear hot and bright.
Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2022/02/twe...
Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2022/02/twe...
August 24, 2025
I picked this collection up because it won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I read it all the way through because that’s what I do sometimes: finish books that aren’t really speaking to me, hoping at some point they will. Alas, this one never grabbed me. I tried.
Phillips’s poems feel intense, though it’s an intensity that is mostly lost on me. Certainly he is adept with language, image, metaphor, and phrasing. But mostly I’d finish one of the poems and feel totally unmoved, not really understand what I’d read or why the words/phrases were in the order they were. “There’s a poem,” is the the most frequent conclusion I would draw after finishing one.
Repeated images include trees, men having sex (there’s a whole section of prose poems about male dalliances in the woods), and horses. Make of that what you will.
Why did it win the tip-top poetry prize? The Pulitzer committee said Then the War "chronicles American culture as the country struggles to make sense of its politics, of life in the wake of pandemic, and of our place in a changing global community.”
Really. 🤔 Did we read the same book? I just finished it ten minutes ago and had no idea it was about any of those things. 🤣
Phillips’s poems feel intense, though it’s an intensity that is mostly lost on me. Certainly he is adept with language, image, metaphor, and phrasing. But mostly I’d finish one of the poems and feel totally unmoved, not really understand what I’d read or why the words/phrases were in the order they were. “There’s a poem,” is the the most frequent conclusion I would draw after finishing one.
Repeated images include trees, men having sex (there’s a whole section of prose poems about male dalliances in the woods), and horses. Make of that what you will.
Why did it win the tip-top poetry prize? The Pulitzer committee said Then the War "chronicles American culture as the country struggles to make sense of its politics, of life in the wake of pandemic, and of our place in a changing global community.”
Really. 🤔 Did we read the same book? I just finished it ten minutes ago and had no idea it was about any of those things. 🤣
February 27, 2022
Although the new poems are not among my favorite of Carl Phillips, the selected collection of his work from 2007-2020 make this an excellent introduction to his overall body of work. I would consider, “Pale Colors in a Tall Field,” among the top dozen individual collections of poetry written since 2000. Comparing the few poems collected from that book and the current new work demonstrates the differences in quality.
For example, in “That the Gods Must Rest,” from the new collection: “…I could tell it was morning/by all the crows rising again from that otherwise abandoned husk/of a car over there— so ruined, who can tell the make of it now, what color.” The non-descriptive sense of ruin and almost a refusal to dig deeper into sense-making, whereas in earlier collections ruin, pain, disaster are treated as difficult, but ultimately if not able to be defeated, at least there is an attempt of understanding and refusal not to be dumbstruck by its presence. As argument, here are the last lines from several poems in “Pale Colors…,” — “Am I not the animal by belief alone I myself make possible? (For Nothing Tender About It)”; “A tamer of wolves tames no foxes, he used to say, as if avoiding/ the question. But never meaning to. You broke it. Now wear it broken. (Dirt Being Dirt)”; “courage mattering so much less than not spooking easily—/maybe all nerve is; the search-and-rescue map wildflowers/make of a field in summer; deserving it, versus asking for it,/versus having asked, and been softly turned from./They said it would hurt, and it does. (A Little Closer Though, If You Can, For What Got Lost Here)”
This last title encapsulates what is remarkable about Phillips’ poetry— the ability to stare into the abyss of pain, mortality, suffering and betrayal through a hard-won talisman of poetic observation that makes these poems worth reading and contemplating.
For example, in “That the Gods Must Rest,” from the new collection: “…I could tell it was morning/by all the crows rising again from that otherwise abandoned husk/of a car over there— so ruined, who can tell the make of it now, what color.” The non-descriptive sense of ruin and almost a refusal to dig deeper into sense-making, whereas in earlier collections ruin, pain, disaster are treated as difficult, but ultimately if not able to be defeated, at least there is an attempt of understanding and refusal not to be dumbstruck by its presence. As argument, here are the last lines from several poems in “Pale Colors…,” — “Am I not the animal by belief alone I myself make possible? (For Nothing Tender About It)”; “A tamer of wolves tames no foxes, he used to say, as if avoiding/ the question. But never meaning to. You broke it. Now wear it broken. (Dirt Being Dirt)”; “courage mattering so much less than not spooking easily—/maybe all nerve is; the search-and-rescue map wildflowers/make of a field in summer; deserving it, versus asking for it,/versus having asked, and been softly turned from./They said it would hurt, and it does. (A Little Closer Though, If You Can, For What Got Lost Here)”
This last title encapsulates what is remarkable about Phillips’ poetry— the ability to stare into the abyss of pain, mortality, suffering and betrayal through a hard-won talisman of poetic observation that makes these poems worth reading and contemplating.
August 17, 2023
I heard of Carl Phillips from a NYT article and was especially curious since this collection won the Pulitzer Prize this year. Phillips is certainly a skillful poet and his use of metaphor between nature (especially trees?) and life is unique and interesting. My favorite piece may have been one prose piece where he talks about getting stuck in a tree as a kid (maybe because I could understand it, and it was quite profound in its exploration of race).
However, while poetry is meant to offer flexibility in grammar, his poetry is so filled with convoluted syntax (so many phrases within phrases and run ons) that I found it unenjoyable and difficult to read. My lack of understanding of the significance of different types of trees and other living things also made his poetry less meaningful to me. Lastly, and this is my personal preference, I don’t enjoy reading poetry with this much sexual content and personally didn’t resonate with it as much since much of Phillips’ poetry details his romantic and sexual experience as a gay man.
However, while poetry is meant to offer flexibility in grammar, his poetry is so filled with convoluted syntax (so many phrases within phrases and run ons) that I found it unenjoyable and difficult to read. My lack of understanding of the significance of different types of trees and other living things also made his poetry less meaningful to me. Lastly, and this is my personal preference, I don’t enjoy reading poetry with this much sexual content and personally didn’t resonate with it as much since much of Phillips’ poetry details his romantic and sexual experience as a gay man.
March 8, 2022
This is the kind of poetry that makes me not like poetry
August 31, 2023
Banger after banger.
September 5, 2023
This is hands down the best book I've read all year. Philips has mastered how to organize poems for maximum impact and meaning. Every poem in this book sits with intention and purpose. There is not a single poem that is filler. All poems set an exploratory questioning, and yearning tone to the book, without feeling overwhelming or too much. Everything is inspiring in this collection. I found myself going back and forth between Then The War and my own notebook, writing down thoughts and notes and inspirations. Philips writes much about memory and the ability to choose how memory can be perceived.
What a wonderful book. I will be returning to this over and over.
What a wonderful book. I will be returning to this over and over.
April 17, 2022
I read this collection after hearing Carl Phillips and Gabrielle Bates at a virtual reading. Phillips encodes profound ideas in imagery and metaphor, and just when a reader thinks they've seen the entire pattern, he takes us a level deeper.
"As a scar commemorates what happened,
so is memory itself but a scar…
Still I can’t stop collecting the strewn shells
of spent ammunition where I come across them;
carefully, I hold each up toward what’s left of the light."
"As a scar commemorates what happened,
so is memory itself but a scar…
Still I can’t stop collecting the strewn shells
of spent ammunition where I come across them;
carefully, I hold each up toward what’s left of the light."
March 11, 2022
highlight:
“In a low voice, slowly”
“In a low voice, slowly”
August 22, 2023
The best part of this collection, by far, is the long poem or “lyric memoir” - Among the Trees. It serves as an index of sorts that helps make sense of the rest of the book, and also adds in a logic for why these selected poems have been included.
As it turns out, trees serve as a recurring theme in Phillips’ poetry. By his telling, trees are connected with sexuality, fully realizing oneself, honesty, and the boundary where civilization stops. It is many other things, but this touchpoint cues the rest of the selection of poems dating back to 2007.
Admittedly I was most enthusiastic about the poetry at the beginning - that which constitutes “Then the War” proper. The other poems are good, they just didn’t always capture my attention in the same way. Many of these poems are horny. But their inclusion makes sense as now, with Among the Trees, you can see the development of a certain strand of poetic thought within Phillips’ body of work.
Pretty good!
As it turns out, trees serve as a recurring theme in Phillips’ poetry. By his telling, trees are connected with sexuality, fully realizing oneself, honesty, and the boundary where civilization stops. It is many other things, but this touchpoint cues the rest of the selection of poems dating back to 2007.
Admittedly I was most enthusiastic about the poetry at the beginning - that which constitutes “Then the War” proper. The other poems are good, they just didn’t always capture my attention in the same way. Many of these poems are horny. But their inclusion makes sense as now, with Among the Trees, you can see the development of a certain strand of poetic thought within Phillips’ body of work.
Pretty good!
Read
August 7, 2023“Sometimes the past seems the stuff of heraldry,
figures proper on a ground of good and evil. Other times
the past sways ocean-like above me. There's a sound
deer still make when in sixes they come down
from the hills at sunrise, the kind of sunrise where
no sun's visible, but it's daylight, and just the rain, and
the deer passing like their own form of light through it;
their hooves mark the damp ground incidentally,
no particular meaning. It's true that love marks the body.”
Cool to read this year’s pulitzer winner in poetry. Where I haven’t been reading novels as much lately I’ve been reading poetry every day and Carl Phillips’ style is totally unique. I don’t think it’s one that totally works with me all the time or is my favorite, but it’s definitely one I’ve learned from.
figures proper on a ground of good and evil. Other times
the past sways ocean-like above me. There's a sound
deer still make when in sixes they come down
from the hills at sunrise, the kind of sunrise where
no sun's visible, but it's daylight, and just the rain, and
the deer passing like their own form of light through it;
their hooves mark the damp ground incidentally,
no particular meaning. It's true that love marks the body.”
Cool to read this year’s pulitzer winner in poetry. Where I haven’t been reading novels as much lately I’ve been reading poetry every day and Carl Phillips’ style is totally unique. I don’t think it’s one that totally works with me all the time or is my favorite, but it’s definitely one I’ve learned from.
August 23, 2023
Amazed amazed amazed by Carl phillips’ poetic voice and reminded of the immense impact pale colors in a tall field had on me 3 years ago when i was first encountering poetry in a real way— there is so much authority claimed in not claiming authority, these poems wash over me like waves, planting deep seeds that, when im lucky, flower in my own poetic practice and mode of being
“Like any spell for bringing everyone you’d ever loved back, said the wind last night. What is it, about nighttime and fragment seeming made for each other? It’s morning, now. The wind is just wind again, saying nothing, of course” (77).
“Courage mattering so much less than not spooking easily— maybe all nerve is; the search-and-rescue map wildflowers make of a field in summer; deserving it, versus asking for it, versus having asked, and been softly turned from. They said it would hurt, and it does” (162).
“Like any spell for bringing everyone you’d ever loved back, said the wind last night. What is it, about nighttime and fragment seeming made for each other? It’s morning, now. The wind is just wind again, saying nothing, of course” (77).
“Courage mattering so much less than not spooking easily— maybe all nerve is; the search-and-rescue map wildflowers make of a field in summer; deserving it, versus asking for it, versus having asked, and been softly turned from. They said it would hurt, and it does” (162).
April 14, 2024
This was my first time reading Carl's book and it was a visceral experience, filled with verses that explore loneliness, forgiveness, and the thin line between animal instinct and human nature. Carl said at his reading that he does not fully believe in forgiveness. For him, true forgiveness would be to forget. I think it is interesting to ponder that concept as one delves into this collection's natural imagery and cynical voice that asks us to question the guidelines that rule our daily lives and emotions. I hope to read more of his work in the future.
(Carl told us at his reading that he is a Swiftie--so it is basically confirmed that Swifties CAN win the Pulitzer Prize!)
(Carl told us at his reading that he is a Swiftie--so it is basically confirmed that Swifties CAN win the Pulitzer Prize!)
December 9, 2025
Perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read in my life. I want to crawl inside his words and live there forever. Truly devoured every second of this, highly rec if you’re interested in getting into poetry (me rn)
September 2, 2025
One of my favorite poets.
I greatly appreciate a poet who writes through self-reflection, whereby their writing becomes explicitly palimpsestic and conveys more of an honesty and, therefore, more of their humanity.
I greatly appreciate a poet who writes through self-reflection, whereby their writing becomes explicitly palimpsestic and conveys more of an honesty and, therefore, more of their humanity.
read-some-poems
June 22, 2023Read the new poems and a few selections and then lost interest over the past month. Less an issue of Phillips' style (which I frequently find elusively intriguing) than an issue with selected collections. I would rather read the selected poems in their original context. I feel like I'm missing something, some implicit webbed associations between poems.
Anyway, intimacy and longing and noncommunication and sex and history and nature coalesce here in pleasing ways. Phillips periodically takes the cheap route of replacing his idiosyncratic sentences with throwaway abstractions. The clichés ring oddly when the rest of the poems are coolly (almost hostily solipsistically) indifferent to easy emotional categorization.
Anyway, intimacy and longing and noncommunication and sex and history and nature coalesce here in pleasing ways. Phillips periodically takes the cheap route of replacing his idiosyncratic sentences with throwaway abstractions. The clichés ring oddly when the rest of the poems are coolly (almost hostily solipsistically) indifferent to easy emotional categorization.
January 5, 2025
Beautiful poetry with some amazing highlights across the book but was somewhat hit and miss for me personally. Also many poems on the same subject/ topic - which got somewhat tiring in the end.
The standouts are amazing though.
The standouts are amazing though.
May 22, 2023
I had the good fortune to hear Carl Phillips read from his poems during National Poetry Month under the auspices of the Leidig Lectureship in Poetry sponsored by Emory & Henry College (Virginia), where I used to work, where I used to run the lectureship. This is fortuitous, as I admit I did not know his poems beforehand, and now I cannot imagine a life in which I would never have read them. I am thankful for readings given by poets who "expand our horizons," something the lectureship always has intended to do.
The poems here are indelibly philosophical, the sort of poems that take me outside my head into the reasons I began to read poetry in the first place as a small child, learning before the age of eight from Sappho and Edward Thomas about how the mind can take something ordinary and fuse it with deep meaning. (Or take something extraordinary and deep and make is simple.) I also am completely enthralled with the way the natural imagery is there alongside the human impulses and insights, an equal partner in the saying, the thinking, the being of the poems. I cannot claim a kinship to the poet, not a literary one, but I can revel finding the company of the names of flowers and plants that sometimes I think so few of us take the time to know (but I try).
I should mention that I got this book as a gift for somebody I thought would love it, and then (of course) I read it most often on my porch, the last reading beside a bush overtaken by honeysuckle (and just as I began a poem referencing bees a bumble bee buzzed past). Synchronicity: that is something Phillips muses on, without belaboring any connections at all, presenting everything that goes together as natural and implicit. I so often read e-books or listen to audio books that the act of running my eyes across print is still more visceral than it might be. In good weather, I like to read books on the front porch, in the sun, perhaps because there is so much light. (One reason I read e-books or listen to audio books: they are so easy to read as I age.) Anyway, reading the book validated my impression of the poems read during the reading I attended. The poems are among my favorites I have read in a long lifetime.
In terms of craft, I like how the poems are tightly controlled and yet a way to enter a stream of consciousness, another mind. I like how they are earthy and light and aery and grounded and ethereal, all at the same time. I like the way life lessons are unveiled without fanfare at the same time the poet's psyche is comfortable with making pronouncements buffered by speculation about all things that matter. I like how they are literate and naturalistic, grounded in natural imagery and the a literary-philosophical tradition, as if the reader is joining the poet in exploring some ideas we might have left at the door after leaving school (or reading more deeply). I was reminded of why my philosophy classes were as essential as my English classes when I was trying to make sense of my brain for things and why poets can do so much more than have a way with words. Phillips has a way with mind.
Will my friend love the book? There is a time that would have be true, when if we were still walking down the same paths I would have said "You have to read this book" and he would have known exactly why on opening the first page. We will see how the reading of the poems unfolds in today's time (old friends do grow old). And, more important for the purposes of goodreads, why would you want to read Then the War? Read it to draw closer to an important mind in a time when the life of the mind is at risk and poets (and other thinkers) are keeping us all honest with what it means to be human within a forest of ideas.
PS: It seems discordant that I bought a birthday card from Dollar General to go with this book to my friend. There are no Dollar Stores in the world invoked within the book of poems. What can I say? It was hard to give away this collection, even though I try to give away books that can be held after I read them. But I replaced it with Wild is the Wind because now that I have read the selected poems I am ready to delve into the larger collections excerpted here. I do not want to lose the metaphysical voice that began in my head with my introduction to the poems from a poet reading his words to a small group in a big room.
The poems here are indelibly philosophical, the sort of poems that take me outside my head into the reasons I began to read poetry in the first place as a small child, learning before the age of eight from Sappho and Edward Thomas about how the mind can take something ordinary and fuse it with deep meaning. (Or take something extraordinary and deep and make is simple.) I also am completely enthralled with the way the natural imagery is there alongside the human impulses and insights, an equal partner in the saying, the thinking, the being of the poems. I cannot claim a kinship to the poet, not a literary one, but I can revel finding the company of the names of flowers and plants that sometimes I think so few of us take the time to know (but I try).
I should mention that I got this book as a gift for somebody I thought would love it, and then (of course) I read it most often on my porch, the last reading beside a bush overtaken by honeysuckle (and just as I began a poem referencing bees a bumble bee buzzed past). Synchronicity: that is something Phillips muses on, without belaboring any connections at all, presenting everything that goes together as natural and implicit. I so often read e-books or listen to audio books that the act of running my eyes across print is still more visceral than it might be. In good weather, I like to read books on the front porch, in the sun, perhaps because there is so much light. (One reason I read e-books or listen to audio books: they are so easy to read as I age.) Anyway, reading the book validated my impression of the poems read during the reading I attended. The poems are among my favorites I have read in a long lifetime.
In terms of craft, I like how the poems are tightly controlled and yet a way to enter a stream of consciousness, another mind. I like how they are earthy and light and aery and grounded and ethereal, all at the same time. I like the way life lessons are unveiled without fanfare at the same time the poet's psyche is comfortable with making pronouncements buffered by speculation about all things that matter. I like how they are literate and naturalistic, grounded in natural imagery and the a literary-philosophical tradition, as if the reader is joining the poet in exploring some ideas we might have left at the door after leaving school (or reading more deeply). I was reminded of why my philosophy classes were as essential as my English classes when I was trying to make sense of my brain for things and why poets can do so much more than have a way with words. Phillips has a way with mind.
Will my friend love the book? There is a time that would have be true, when if we were still walking down the same paths I would have said "You have to read this book" and he would have known exactly why on opening the first page. We will see how the reading of the poems unfolds in today's time (old friends do grow old). And, more important for the purposes of goodreads, why would you want to read Then the War? Read it to draw closer to an important mind in a time when the life of the mind is at risk and poets (and other thinkers) are keeping us all honest with what it means to be human within a forest of ideas.
PS: It seems discordant that I bought a birthday card from Dollar General to go with this book to my friend. There are no Dollar Stores in the world invoked within the book of poems. What can I say? It was hard to give away this collection, even though I try to give away books that can be held after I read them. But I replaced it with Wild is the Wind because now that I have read the selected poems I am ready to delve into the larger collections excerpted here. I do not want to lose the metaphysical voice that began in my head with my introduction to the poems from a poet reading his words to a small group in a big room.
April 11, 2023
The title implies much more political consideration then appears in Then the war, but who’s complaining? These poems read like an elegant conversation embodied in relationship with trees and light as much as other lovers. Lovely to read earlier work like "Pale Colors in a Tall Field" in the larger context of selected poems.
"They say the absence of a thing doesn't
have to mean the desire for it. That's the trouble with words: soon
almost anything sounds true. "
Metaphysical reflections are always grounded in the particular play, often in the metaphor of forest and leaf.
Of the Shining Underlife
"Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.
Then they're branches again-hickory, I think.
It's not too late, then."
The eye hears what the ear sees in this vivid exploration of consciousness.
"They say that deep in the interstices// where dream and waking dream and what, between the two, I've/ called a life, seem a nest of swords,/ each crossing the other, flashless, as from long neglect,// there's a meadow's worth left, still, of the aftergrass..."
The lyric lives:
“I’m a song, changing. I’m a light
rain falling through a vast
darkness toward a different
darkness.”
"They say the absence of a thing doesn't
have to mean the desire for it. That's the trouble with words: soon
almost anything sounds true. "
Metaphysical reflections are always grounded in the particular play, often in the metaphor of forest and leaf.
Of the Shining Underlife
"Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.
Then they're branches again-hickory, I think.
It's not too late, then."
The eye hears what the ear sees in this vivid exploration of consciousness.
"They say that deep in the interstices// where dream and waking dream and what, between the two, I've/ called a life, seem a nest of swords,/ each crossing the other, flashless, as from long neglect,// there's a meadow's worth left, still, of the aftergrass..."
The lyric lives:
“I’m a song, changing. I’m a light
rain falling through a vast
darkness toward a different
darkness.”
June 30, 2023
“Then the War” by Carl Phillips will remind you of high school English class, not in a good way. I wanted someone to explain it and get it over with. Some of the images are pleasant and deep, but I did not understand enough to recommend them, and what I did understand took so many re-reads that it seemed like a chore.
A 22-page entry called “Among the Trees” works so well that it redeems the first part, as Phillips explores how we use the forest to conceal and escape—nature as a metaphor motif has permeated poetry for generations, and the audiobook does that justice.
There is a great deal of skill here, as Phillips makes points and casually makes sexual references that come out of nowhere. Understanding his work will require a lot of re-reads, and how motivated you are to do that will most likely determine your enjoyment.
The book is my least favorite of the last five Pulitzer poetry winners, but I do not think I am the target audience. Many poets tend to be gay men and have a unique perspective on things that authors tend to dance around, so I am glad that their demographic exists.
Phillips teaches poetry at Washington University in St. Louis,n and I would like to take his class to figure out how to communicate this way. Some of the images are beautiful. It doesn’t add up to something I can recommend or expect to turn non-believers on to poetry.
A 22-page entry called “Among the Trees” works so well that it redeems the first part, as Phillips explores how we use the forest to conceal and escape—nature as a metaphor motif has permeated poetry for generations, and the audiobook does that justice.
There is a great deal of skill here, as Phillips makes points and casually makes sexual references that come out of nowhere. Understanding his work will require a lot of re-reads, and how motivated you are to do that will most likely determine your enjoyment.
The book is my least favorite of the last five Pulitzer poetry winners, but I do not think I am the target audience. Many poets tend to be gay men and have a unique perspective on things that authors tend to dance around, so I am glad that their demographic exists.
Phillips teaches poetry at Washington University in St. Louis,n and I would like to take his class to figure out how to communicate this way. Some of the images are beautiful. It doesn’t add up to something I can recommend or expect to turn non-believers on to poetry.
June 21, 2022
Favorite Poems:
Then the war
Little Shields, in Starlight
Morning in the Bowl of Night
Not Wild, Merely Free
29-30 (Among the Trees)
34 (Among the Trees)
Then the War
Like the Sweet Earth Itself
Beginning and end of Electric
Speak Low
Mirror, Window, Mirror
Now in Our Most Ordinary Voices
The Need for Dreaming
So the Mind Like a Gate Swings Open
Black Swan on Water, in a Little Rain
Neon
The Strong by Their Stillness
last line @ Musculature
last line @ If You Go Away
first half @Monotomy
beginning @ Pale Colors in a Tall Field
Dirt Being Dirt -> Favorite out of the collection
Love the end of @ A Little Closer Though, If You Can, For What Got Lost There
Fine
Self
I had a really hard time getting through this collection, even though it was by my request that my local library bought it. I wanted to include some favorite quotes here but with poetry collections I like to mark up books which I was not able to do. I find it interesting how he wrote about nature to explore themes of race and sexuality.
Then the war
Little Shields, in Starlight
Morning in the Bowl of Night
Not Wild, Merely Free
29-30 (Among the Trees)
34 (Among the Trees)
Then the War
Like the Sweet Earth Itself
Beginning and end of Electric
Speak Low
Mirror, Window, Mirror
Now in Our Most Ordinary Voices
The Need for Dreaming
So the Mind Like a Gate Swings Open
Black Swan on Water, in a Little Rain
Neon
The Strong by Their Stillness
last line @ Musculature
last line @ If You Go Away
first half @Monotomy
beginning @ Pale Colors in a Tall Field
Dirt Being Dirt -> Favorite out of the collection
Love the end of @ A Little Closer Though, If You Can, For What Got Lost There
Fine
Self
I had a really hard time getting through this collection, even though it was by my request that my local library bought it. I wanted to include some favorite quotes here but with poetry collections I like to mark up books which I was not able to do. I find it interesting how he wrote about nature to explore themes of race and sexuality.
May 23, 2022
Reading these poems feels as if you are cloaked in the natural embodiment of feeling, memory, time.
I was especially drawn to "Then the War", "Pale Colors in a Tall Field", "Star Map with Action Figures", and "Among the Trees" - the memoir section but also the section explaining the crafting of these poems, the reasoning behind the construction and the written words themselves.
"They say the absence of a thing doesn't
have to mean the desire for it. That's the trouble with words: soon
almost anything sounds true. "
(Seemingly this thesis - that we should not trust anything we read - is the underlying theme of my reading in 2022.)
Of the Shining Underlife
"Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.
Then they're branches again-hickory, I think.
-It's not too late, then."
from Monomoy
"Who can say how she got there-
in the ocean, I mean-but I once watched a horse
make her way back to land mid-hurricane: having
ridden, surfer-like, the very waves that at any moment
could have overwhelmed her in their crash to shore, she
shook herself, looked back once on the water's restlessness-
history's always restless-and the horse stepped free."
I was especially drawn to "Then the War", "Pale Colors in a Tall Field", "Star Map with Action Figures", and "Among the Trees" - the memoir section but also the section explaining the crafting of these poems, the reasoning behind the construction and the written words themselves.
"They say the absence of a thing doesn't
have to mean the desire for it. That's the trouble with words: soon
almost anything sounds true. "
(Seemingly this thesis - that we should not trust anything we read - is the underlying theme of my reading in 2022.)
Of the Shining Underlife
"Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.
Then they're branches again-hickory, I think.
-It's not too late, then."
from Monomoy
"Who can say how she got there-
in the ocean, I mean-but I once watched a horse
make her way back to land mid-hurricane: having
ridden, surfer-like, the very waves that at any moment
could have overwhelmed her in their crash to shore, she
shook herself, looked back once on the water's restlessness-
history's always restless-and the horse stepped free."
June 24, 2025
The part of this book that was the new collection “Then The War” = outfuckingstanding, I loved it so much. Felt like an album = cohesive and compelling. Five bajillion stars.
.
The selections from other previous collections = felt so clearly to be poems from different collections, disconnected and disparate, that I kinda had to force myself through to the end. Good poems but the selection process seemed unclear and kind of repetitive. Three stars.
.
I think this is my first time reading Phillips (once again, @openbookopen led me here!) and I loved how his tone is so conversational and so inviting and yet there’s a sense that he’s saying something else that you can’t quite catch. Each poem appears to be completely open and inviting, but there’s also more under there if you can find the edge of the peel. Like a tantalizing translation.
.
The selections from other previous collections = felt so clearly to be poems from different collections, disconnected and disparate, that I kinda had to force myself through to the end. Good poems but the selection process seemed unclear and kind of repetitive. Three stars.
.
I think this is my first time reading Phillips (once again, @openbookopen led me here!) and I loved how his tone is so conversational and so inviting and yet there’s a sense that he’s saying something else that you can’t quite catch. Each poem appears to be completely open and inviting, but there’s also more under there if you can find the edge of the peel. Like a tantalizing translation.
December 1, 2025
I had never heard of this poet, but I was somewhat surprised at what seems to be the honesty of these poems. He is telling what he wants to without not so much regards for what the reader might think. I saw this in some poems.
Some poems required more attention than others, but the good use of punctuation helps the reading that the poems give. Phillips know how to punctuate, something that is done very loosely sometimes in poetry. In general, this is a good book, and one that may give some sometime of pleasurable reading while for others the poems could be seen is not having that greatness of really good poetry except for a small group of them. Anyway, the books has some merit as poetry, and I liked it.
Some poems required more attention than others, but the good use of punctuation helps the reading that the poems give. Phillips know how to punctuate, something that is done very loosely sometimes in poetry. In general, this is a good book, and one that may give some sometime of pleasurable reading while for others the poems could be seen is not having that greatness of really good poetry except for a small group of them. Anyway, the books has some merit as poetry, and I liked it.
November 16, 2023
This summer I decided to read more poetry, and look, I read some poetry. I feel very unqualified to write about my perception of it, and that’s probably symptomatic of What I Think Poetry Has Become, or some garbage like that. I will say it slowed me down and caused me to notice words more sharply again. I think effective poetry - “good” seems like the wrong word - makes language new again. This did that, for the most part. Phillips does have one quirk - self-interrupting with qualifying phrases within qualifying phrases - that became more grating over the length of the book. Call it one disarmingly long hair in a lovely bowl of soup.
September 17, 2023
A rightly acclaimed collection of poetry that spans several decades of this talented author's work. Every poem is totally unique and makes the reader excited to experience the next one. One of the overall themes is the importance of seeing, feeling and touching nature around us. After reading this you will no longer go on a walk without actually seeing what is there. I have never read an author that uses punctuation better to make you focus on and pay attention to his words. This is a lovely beautiful collection of verse.
December 31, 2023
Dana Gioia says that Baudelaire's _The Flowers of Evil_ proves that evil can be beautiful. That's how I feel about these poems.
I read the first forty pages of this book, encompassing part 1 of _Then the War_ and "Among the Trees". I hope that the narrator's voice is not Phillips', because the narrator is evil. Eloquent, mystic, perceptive, beautiful, and morally deranged.
One example: the narrator spends "Not Wild, Merely Free" twisting his ruining someone's life into a form poetic enough that he can admire it. I assume the intended emotional response is revulsion.
I read the first forty pages of this book, encompassing part 1 of _Then the War_ and "Among the Trees". I hope that the narrator's voice is not Phillips', because the narrator is evil. Eloquent, mystic, perceptive, beautiful, and morally deranged.
One example: the narrator spends "Not Wild, Merely Free" twisting his ruining someone's life into a form poetic enough that he can admire it. I assume the intended emotional response is revulsion.
March 20, 2025
A while back I got a chance to see Phillips read at a local event here in Tulsa, OK where I live. The reading was OK, I felt like he was being asked to do somethings by the organizers (like read his Prose) that weren't super comfortable for him.
I came away with an autographed copy of this Pulitzer-prize winning collection of his poetry. To be honest, it kind of blew me away when I finally read it. Phillips is kind of a younger, more current Charles Wright. Although much of his poetry is, like Wright's about Nature, neither Phillips nor Wright is, strictly speaking, a "Nature Poet".
His work varies in length, and covers a number of topics, but, very frequently, what it is to be a Gay man (a Gay black man, to be precise) in America at this time in history. The poems about his lovers, and Love, are tender, intimate, and even a bit explicit. But always remarkable.
Highly recommended for anyone who loves poetry. Or even for those who think they don't.
I came away with an autographed copy of this Pulitzer-prize winning collection of his poetry. To be honest, it kind of blew me away when I finally read it. Phillips is kind of a younger, more current Charles Wright. Although much of his poetry is, like Wright's about Nature, neither Phillips nor Wright is, strictly speaking, a "Nature Poet".
His work varies in length, and covers a number of topics, but, very frequently, what it is to be a Gay man (a Gay black man, to be precise) in America at this time in history. The poems about his lovers, and Love, are tender, intimate, and even a bit explicit. But always remarkable.
Highly recommended for anyone who loves poetry. Or even for those who think they don't.
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