Phillips, Carl 1959–

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Phillips, Carl 1959–

PERSONAL:

Born July 23, 1959, in Everett, WA; son of Carl (an Air Force medic) and Helen Elizabeth (a homemaker) Phillips; married (divorced); partner of Doug Macomber. Ethnicity: "African American." Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1981; University of Massachusetts, M.A.T., 1983; Boston University, M.A., 1993.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, Washington University, Duncker 116, Box 1122, 1 Brookings Dr., St. Louis, MO 63130. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Taught Latin in several high schools, 1983-91; Washington University, St. Louis, MO, assistant professor of English, 1993-95, associate professor, then professor of English and African American studies, 1995—. Has also taught at Harvard University, Boston University, and the Iowa Writers Workshop.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, 1992, for In the Blood; National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and Lambda Literary Award finalist, both for Cortège; Witter Bynner Fellowship, 1998; Guggenheim Foundation fellow, 1998; National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, 1998, for From the Devotions; Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, 2001, for Pastoral; Academy Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2001; Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Claremont Graduate University, 2002, for The Tether; Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation prize, Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, and National Book Award in poetry finalist, all 2004, for The Rest of Love; Academy of American Poets fellowship, 2006; Pushcart prize; Academy of American Poets prize; induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

WRITINGS:

In the Blood (poetry), Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1992.

Cortège (poetry), Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 1995.

From the Devotions (poetry), Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 1998.

Pastoral (poetry), Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 2000.

(Selector and author of introduction) Jennifer Atkinson, The Drowned City, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 2000.

The Tether (poetry), Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2001.

The Rest of Love, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2004.

Riding Westward, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2006.

Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2007.

Poetry appeared in The Best American Poetry, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, and 2001. Contributor of poetry to periodicals, including Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, and Yale Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Carl Phillips is an African American poet and educator. His verse typically celebrates human sexuality, exploring themes of homosexuality in such collections as In the Blood, Cortège, and The Tether. He is a professor of English and African American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has taught since 1993.

A classicist by training, Phillips often employs classical forms and makes allusions to classical literature, art, and music. While in his teens, Phillips began to write poetry. "I was a nerdy kid," he told Lawrence Biemiller in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Maybe it has to do with creating your own world. For some people it's easier to create a world that you can rely on, that travels with you." Phillips entered Harvard University on a scholarship, where he studied Latin and Greek. For a long time he did not write any poetry, but in 1990, while coming to terms with his homosexuality, he rediscovered his poetic voice.

In 1992, Phillips's In the Blood was the winner of the Morse Poetry prize. Alfred Corn, writing in the Kenyon Review, described the style of In the Blood as metamorphic. "As with symbolism, words are used in associative rather than logical ways, constantly shifting ground and modulating context so that the central subject is never made baldly explicit. The poems (most of them) will support several interpretations, though no single interpretation perfectly."

According to Biemiller, Phillips's second collection, Cortège, deals with the flesh, "which is to say that they're poems of sleeping and dreaming, of forgiveness, of longing for someone or fearing you'll lose him, of letters signed with love." It elicited praise from commentators. "These poems are not for the faint-hearted nor the falsely moral," asserted Chelsea critic Kay Murphy, who found the work to be "deeply rewarding." "The encoded diction of the gay subculture can slight the uninitiated; the disregard for narrative that forces an alternate means to meaning can challenge even the most active reader. These poetics shape Phillips' originality, courage, and sheer vitality within a tradition. For those who experience katharsis in the metaphysics of intellect, symmetry, music, classicism, and the erotic, Cortège will embrace you on this self-proverbial journey," concluded Murphy. According to Rochelle Ratner in Library Journal, Cortège contains "some of the most sensitive homoerotic" verse in modern literature. A "fine collection," praised a New Yorker reviewer.

In his third collection of verse, From the Devotions, Phillips returns to the theme of desire and the physical, moral, and spiritual aspects attending it. "The flesh he writes of is not, in the end, black or white or gay or straight or classical or modern," asserted Biemiller. "It is merely the flesh, a stock of dreams and glances and sighs that we all keep in common. And he has made himself its poet." Jenn Lewin in Microreviews called the poems in From the Devotions "graceful, magical lyrics." "One of Phillips's strengths is his background in the study of Latin and Greek. His poems take myths and make them vital and silvery again," lauded Catherine Rankovic of the Progressive. Phillips reveals "better than most, an emerging generational concern about things spiritual," concluded Rankovic.

Phillips's subsequent collections, Pastoral and The Tether, were also well received in critical circles. The poetry in Pastoral continues to "echo the sorrow, alienation and eros of bodily existence," summarized a Publishers Weekly critic, who called the work "brilliant." Philip Clark in Lambda Book Report argued that the poems in Pastoral are written in a style different from Phillips's previous collections; they are "more daring than anything Phillips has tried previously, and when they work, the poems create a pleasantly disorienting effect." Tina Barr in the Boston Review found the poems in the collection "self-reflexive, musical, referential, educated, and passionate." A Publishers Weekly critic reviewing The Tether argued that the author writes "some of the most formally accomplished first-person poems of male desire and relationships of his generation."

The Rest of Love further enhanced Phillips's reputation. Observing that the book's thirty-three poems explore Phillips's usual themes of love, sex, and masculine desire, a writer for Publishers Weekly identified a more nuanced poetic control at work here and noted the poems' "conscious attempts at sharing one's physical and psychic lives fully—or as fully as possible." Library Journal reviewer Barbara Hoffert commented on the collection's deep sense of "loss and melancholy," yet added that the poems are also ready and willing to confront a "traitorous world." Cyril Dabydeen, writing in World Literature Today, praised Phillips as a poet whose work stems from "his realization of what's essentially deep in the spirit, and where the human heart is taking us."

In Riding Westward, according to the Southern Review critic Keith Taylor, Phillips "seems to have grown a bit dissatisfied with some of his own formal discoveries. Although many of the poems still show his masterful use of syntax … other poems seem to have been willed into simpler sentences, as if [Phillips] wanted to build his associative resonance from short declaratives."

The result, in Taylor's view, is a book that is more accessible than Phillips's previous works. "It's almost as if the poet has reached a clearer understanding and wants us, his readers, to share it with him," wrote Taylor. Library Journal reviewer Ilya Kaminsky also noted this readability, commenting that despite the complexity of ideas in this book, the poet's images "ground us." Riding Westward explores themes of foreknowledge and memory, regret, and the awareness of death. For Janet St. John, writing in Booklist, the book offers nothing less than an "expansion of mind" akin to the expansive horizon of the western landscape.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Book Review, March, 1999, review of From the Devotions, p. 37.

Antioch Review, spring, 1999, John Taylor, review of From the Devotions, p. 57; spring, 2002, Carol Moldaw, review of The Tether, p. 347; winter, 2007, Benjamin S. Grossberg, review of Riding Westward, p. 198.

Black Issues Book Review, November-December, 2004, Karma Johnson, "Coin of the Realm: Essays on the life and Art of Poetry," p. 46.

Book, January, 2000, review of Pastoral, p. 85.

Booklist, February 15, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of The Tether, p. 1099; February 15, 2004, Donna Seaman, "New Works by African American Poets," p. 1026; May 1, 2006, Janet St. John, review of Riding Westward, p. 65.

Boston Book Review, May, 2000, Tina Barr, review of Pastoral, p. 38.

Boston Review, December-January, 2000-2001, Tina Barr, review of Pastoral, pp. 58-59; October, 2001, review of The Tether, p. 62.

Chelsea, 1996, Kay Murphy, review of Cortège, pp. 156-159; 1998, review of From the Devotions, p. 227; 2001, review of Pastoral, p. 323.

Chicago Review, spring, 2001, Gary Leising, review of Pastoral, p. 127.

Choice, July-August, 1993, W.V. Davis, review of In the Blood, p. 1770.

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 22, 1996, Lawrence Biemiller, "Poet Writes ‘Of the Flesh’ with Classical Richness," p. A51.

Georgia Review, spring, 2005, Judith Kitchen, "The Properties of Rain," pp. 181-199.

Hungry Mind Review, winter, 1997-1998, review of From the Devotions, pp. 32-33, 38.

Kenyon Review, summer-fall, 2002, Michael Thurston, "A Way to Frame the Truth," p. 218; fall, 1994, Alfred Corn, review of In the Blood, p. 153.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 1999, review of Pastoral, p. 1914; February 1, 2001, review of The Tether, p. 153.

Lambda Book Report, March, 1993, review of In the Blood, p. 47; May-June, 1993, Alan Miller, review of In the Blood, p. 32; April, 2000, Philip Clark, review of Pastoral, p. 16; summer, 2006, Aaron Smith, review of Riding Westward, p. 19.

Library Journal, October 15, 1992, Daniel J. Guillory, review of In the Blood, p. 71; October 15, 1995, Rochelle Ratner, review of Cortège, p. 65; December 1, 1997, Rochelle Ratner, review of From the Devotions, p. 111; April 1, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of From the Devotions, p. 96; April 15, 2001, Barbara Hoffert, review of The Tether, p. 99; November 1, 2003, Barbara Hoffert, review of The Rest of Love, p. 87; February 15, 2006, Ilya Kaminsky, review of Riding Westward, p. 120.

Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2001, review of The Tether, p. 34.

Microreviews, summer, 1998, Jenn Lewin, review of From the Devotions, p. 63.

Nation, June 16, 1997, Patrick Markee, "The Nature of Blood," p. 29.

New Yorker, August 5, 1996, review of Cortège, p. 75; May 21, 2001, review of The Tether, p. 101.

New York Times Book Review, April 18, 2004, David Orr, review of The Rest of Love, p. 20.

Ploughshares, fall, 2007, review of Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006, p. 219.

Poetry, September, 1998, Bill Christophersen, review of From the Devotions, p. 337; February, 2002, Bruce F. Murphy, review of The Tether, p. 283; February, 2007, Sandra M. Gilbert, "Eight Takes," p. 404.

Progressive, April, 1998, Catherine Rankovic, review of From the Devotions, p. 44.

Publishers Weekly, October 19, 1992, review of In the Blood, p. 72; November 24, 1997, review of From the Devotions, pp. 68-69; December 6, 1999, Jennifer Lewin, "PW Talks to Carl Phillips," and review of Pastoral, p. 71; February 12, 2001, review of The Tether, p. 203; December 22, 2003, review of The Rest of Love, p. 54; April 3, 2006, review of Riding Westward, p. 40; May 21, 2007, review of Quiver of Arrows, p. 37.

Ruminator Review, summer, 2001, review of The Tether, p. 61.

Southern Review, spring, 2007, Keith Taylor, "Associations," p. 467.

Tikkun, March, 2002, review of The Tether, p. 347.

Washington Post Book World, May 14, 2000, review of Pastoral, p. 6; December 3, 2000, review of Pastoral, p. 16.

World Literature Today, summer, 2000, Daniel Garrett, review of Pastoral, p. 600; summer-autumn, 2001, John Mann, review of The Tether, p. 157; May 1, 2006, Cyril Dabydeen, review of The Rest of Love, p. 73.

Yale Review, April, 2000, James Longenbach, review of Pastoral, p. 164.