Ahead of his reading with Ama Codjoe on April 10, Carl Phillips — a defining poet of his generation and the author of 16 collections of poetry — talked to us about his two new books, Then The War: New and Selected Poems, 2007-2020 and My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing, his influence on emerging writers, the unexpected joys of writing prose, and more.
In the preface to My Trade is Mystery, you write, “Poems are, for me, deeply private, as is the making of them.” And yet you’ve shared a prolific body of work with your readers over the years, and you’ve had a profound influence on an emerging generation of poets. What is the function of privacy in your poetry? And how do you maintain privacy in poems that are so carefully studied and beloved?
It’s a good question, though I’m a bit embarrassed — I don’t feel like someone who a bunch of people read, and I don’t think of myself as someone who has had a big influence on other poets. The kind of poetry that I write is very much about interiority. I write about what it feels like to be in a particular body in this moment. Privacy is essential to me. I think I’m the poet I am because when I was beginning to write I didn’t have community; I didn’t have a sense of how someone else thought I was supposed to be writing, and that was useful. When I first started writing I thought my poems were just for me. I see now why people might read them, because they too are human beings struggling with the same basic things that I am. It’s one thing to talk about particulars of race and queerness, but then there’s getting older, having sex, trying to make a relationship work — more general things that anybody might be trying to figure out, fucking up, then trying again.
Then the War, your recent book of new and selected poetry, follows an earlier selected volume, Quiver of Arrows, from 2007. You’ve shown great consistency in your poems over the decades, but there’s also a clear arc and evolution. I’m curious what distinguishes these two books for you. How do you think you’ve changed as a poet since Quiver of Arrows came out?
I often think of my poems as an ongoing meditation as I try to figure out my life. Since Quiver of Arrows came out I’ve gone through large life changes — leaving a long relationship, for example, and starting a new one with someone quite a bit younger. I feel more confident in my poems — which I know might sound funny, because my poems are characterized by a lot of self-correction and doubt — but it feels true because I have a lot more confidence in how I want to live my life, and how I don’t. For me, it seems as if the poems have a different kind of authority as a result.
Your new long poem “Among the Trees” in Then the War stands out in your body of work — it walks the edge between the athletic syntax of your shorter lyric poems and the more expository style in your essays, and it’s more explicitly autobiographical. How did this poem emerge?
It was originally a commissioned essay for a magazine, Emergence, that was doing an issue about trees. I got a lot of good feedback about the essay. I’ve always loved the prose section in Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, and I’d never done anything like that. I wrote it out in 14 parts, and I imagined it as a kind of sonnet, with each section acting as a line. Between that and my last couple of prose books, it’s made me think that maybe that’s a direction I’m headed in — I always think that I hate writing prose, but maybe I like it more than I think I do. One of my newer poems, “This Far in,” a long, chatty, Schuyleresque poem, is the most exciting part of this whole book for me. But “Among the Trees” does stand out — I don’t think I’ve ever talked about my childhood in my poems before. It reckons, as well, with things like shame about sexual behavior, though there isn’t much of that in my life anymore.
You’ll be reading at 92NY with Ama Codjoe, who just released her debut collection, Bluest Nude. What is your relationship to poets who have come after you, who have been shaped by your influence in the classroom and on the page?
I just taught Ama’s book for my graduate workshop, and we had a great discussion. I met Ama when she was my student at the Cave Canem workshop long ago.... I’ve taught for 30 years, and many of my students stay in touch. On the one hand, it’s great, and it makes me think this is what it would feel like to be a good parent. On the other hand, it makes me feel a bit old! But mostly it’s just gratitude. My first passion, before I wrote poems, was teaching. That’s part of why I’m very excited by how people have responded to My Trade is Mystery. It’s a book that I hope anyone at any stage in their life as an artist could find helpful. That might end up being the most useful thing I ever wrote, which would make me happy — I want people to like my poems, but it feels more useful to have written something that makes people feel like they can continue making art.
Carl Phillips and Ama Codjoe read from their new books at 92NY on Monday, April 10. Join them in person or online.