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Reposted by Carl Phillips

Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 1d

Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social

I forget what I wanted to
mean to you.
I forget what I
meant to give to you, that I haven’t.

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Reposted by Carl Phillips

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 12d

The orchard was on fire, but that didn’t stop him from slowly walking
straight into it, shirtless, you can see where the flames have
foliaged—here, especially—his chest . . .

from "Dirt Being Dirt" by Carl Phillips
buff.ly/oWhB4p1

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Adrian Dallas Frandle @adrianf.bsky.social · 27d

Charles Simic

CLOUDS GATHERING
It seemed the kind of life we wanted.
Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.
Sunlight in every room.
The two of us walking by the sea naked.
Some evenings, however, we found ourselves Unsure of what comes next.
Like tragic actors in a theater on fire, With birds circling over our heads, The dark pines strangely still,
Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.
We were back on our terrace sipping wine.
Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?
Clouds of almost human appearance
Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.
The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.
You lighting a candle, carrying it naked Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly.
The dark pines and grasses strangely still.

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · 27d

September and Friday and nightfall.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · Sep 9

Today’s poem is selected by Carl Phillips as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

It is Linda Gregg's birthday today, September 9th.

"Alma to Her Sister" appeared in Too Bright to See by Linda Gregg, published by Graywolf Press, 1981.

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Chembu🌺🧶 @chembarathi.bsky.social · Sep 4

I look for omens everywhere, because they
are everywhere
to be found. They come to me like strays,
like the damaged,
something that could know better, and should, therefore-but does not: a form of faith, you've said.
- Carl Philips
#Poetry #LiteratureSky 💙📚👀

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Suzanna Lundale 🧙‍♀️💜 @suzannalundale.bsky.social · Sep 3

"We're individual in our tastes, ambitions, disappointments. We carry inside us our own wildernesses, as particular in their obsessions as they are various in their surprises. These differences give context to the points of likeness between us." - Carl Phillips on community, in My Trade is Mystery

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Sep 2

Thx, I forgot to post this myself! From this month’s @austbookreview.bsky.social

maeve’s beauty salon and chainsaw repair @maeveynot.bsky.social · Sep 2

carl phillips

Here in the Grass

What had art - their
own, anyway - ever been
about, though, if not

somehow
the movement
around desiring

to know a thing
and coming briefly
to rest

in front of that
thing's refusal
to be entirely known?

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Aug 26

Roxy!

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Aug 26

I tend to be pretty quiet here, but here’s a new profile pic…

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Aug 8

Well, thank you very much!

Le Wokisme? or La Botte? @csilverandgold.bsky.social · Aug 8

Carl Phillips is such a ridiculously good poet. Sheesh.

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jul 29

Beautiful indeed.

D. A. Powell @dapowell.bsky.social · Jul 29

This beautiful summer poem by Rosalie Moffat.

THE SUMMER THE COLLIES

died and were buried beneath fir trees,
I had two kinds of apple: red and red-yellow.
I had a three-legged aluminum ladder, a bucket, a wasp's nest the size of my fist.
I fit between
the branches, filled, first my hands and pockets
and then the bucket. A wasp with the face
of my oldest dog stung me twice. It takes a long time
to leave. My father's green bulldozer will break down
in the purple-headed thistles some August
and then stay and stay there. A tractor outlasts
a person. It's never worth it to haul it away.
There are monuments, in the country, everywhere.
If I talk too often about wasps it's because they're inescapable.
They'll be under the hood in no time--here, no emptiness
goes uninhabited. I always want to put Christ's heart back
in his chest, like returning a jar of jam
to the cupboard. I make the bruised apples into sauce,
ladle it hot into jars. What is sown as perishable
is raised imperishable--a joke I make
to myself about the buzzing soul
of the bulldozer, existing here on earth
long after it's died, as something venomous
and intelligent.

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jul 26

I mean, that’s basically how I met my bear partner…

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jul 19

Aha! I believe I know the Carl and Doug it’s dedicated to! I was very sorry to have to part with so many beloved books when I retired, but I reminded myself that the passalong world is how new readers find us. Cheers! And here’s to seeing you again soon!

D. A. Powell @dapowell.bsky.social · Jul 19

Nice to see used copies of my first book floating out there in the passalongs. And in such good condition. A rare find I hope you got it cheap.

🥊 @querelleofbros.bsky.social · Jul 18

incredible bookstore find and didn’t even realize it’s signed til i got home 🥹

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jul 12

I’m glad you decided to give it another try! Thank you!

Monet Patrice Thomas @monetpatricethomas.bsky.social · Jul 12

Today, I picked it up again and started from the beginning and it was like my mind had just need time to adjust because suddenly I could read straight through and even “hear” the poet’s voice. Such a cool moment.

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deb cluchey @accedimus.bsky.social · Jul 11

Carl Phillips

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jul 10

Yes, and another method can be to trust the image to do the work and revise away the language that repeats what the image is doing. I learned this from reading the T’ang poets…

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jul 6

Two possible solutions for sending out parts of an ongoing sequence: you can call each section “from (sequence name)” or you can give each section a number (which can be removed when the whole thing appears in a book later)…

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jun 29

Thank you, Phillip!

phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · Jun 29

is that / not love?

Carl Phillips

WHITE DOG

First snow-I release her into it -
I know, released, she won't come back.
This is different from letting what,

already, we count as lost go. It is nothing
like that. Also, it is not like wanting to learn what
losing a thing we love feels like. Oh yes:

I love her.
Released, she seems for a moment as if
some part of me that, almost,

I wouldn't mind
understanding better, is that
not love? She seems a part of me,

and then she seems entirely like what she is:
a white dog,
less white suddenly, against the snow,

who won't come back. I know that; and, knowing it,
I release her. It's as if I release her
because I know.

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Brandon T. Snider @brandontsnider.bsky.social · Jun 27

Possibly my favorite summation of Pride

Years ago I was at New York Pride and I remember running into this couple and they told me they drove like five hours to be at Pride and I was like, “Five hours? Why would you drive five hours?” And he said to me, “This is the one time a year and the only place where I can hold my partner’s hand and kiss my partner in the street without having to look around first. It’s the only place. I don’t have that anywhere else.” One time a year. One place. This is it. And that’s what Pride means. - bob the drag queen

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Daniel Samir Cyran @solace121.bsky.social · Jun 24

This poem by Carl Phillips. Like whoa.

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Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · Jun 18

“If we can make, from tenderness, a revolution—“

—Carl Phillips in THEN THE WAR 💙

Fixed Shadow, Moving Water

One friend tells me everything's political, another says nothing is, we just make it political.
By "we"" he means human beings, I assume-what's political to a fox curled in sleep,
or a pond, or a sycamore in winter with no leaves left to stop the snow falling through it? I have loved you for less time than I have loved some others,
but none more deeply than you; no one more absolutely. Which, as if inevitably, amounts to a hierarchy of sorts, doesn't it? Value, then the power that comes with it-soon enough, the distribution of power, who gets to do the distributing...
But if we make of tenderness a countervailing force, the two of us-
If we can make, from tenderness, a revolution-

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Carl Phillips @cphillipspoet.bsky.social · Jun 18

Yep this is an astonishing poem!

D. A. Powell @dapowell.bsky.social · Jun 18

This poem by @aireadee.bsky.social lifted me this morning on its Icarus wings.

"Light refracts my name in
dialect only moths comprehend."

Altitude

Icarus, he advised, heed the warning: don’t fly

poets.org

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Reposted by Carl Phillips

scare-ah 🕸️ @sarahmillswrites.bsky.social · Jun 8

“You: the dark that nothing, not even the light, displaces.”

—Carl Phillips
from “Then the War”

Silverchest
Unafraid is what we were, I think, and then afraid, though it mostly seemed otherwise. I opened my eyes, I saw, I closed, I shut them.
The usual morning glories
twist up through banks of gone-wild-by-now holly; crickets for song, morphos for their glamour, which is quiet-blue, and quiet ...
You: the dark that nothing, not even the light, displaces.
You, who have been the single leaf that won't stop tossing, among the others.
For you.

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PN Review @pnreview.bsky.social · Jun 6

Sign up now for an online poetry short course! 🖊️

The four-week course is an opportunity to be tutored by PN Review editors John McAuliffe and Michael Schmidt.

More information can be found on the Carcanet website: www.carcanet.co.uk/

Poetry Short Course - Carcanet Press

We are excited to announce the return of our online poetry short course, run in collaboration with the University of Manchester Centre for New Writing and

www.carcanet.co.uk

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