Stray Questions for: Patrick Phillips
By Gregory Cowles
Patrick Phillips is the author of two books of poetry, “Chattahoochee” and “Boy.” His work has appeared in many magazines, including Poetry, Ploughshares and The Virginia Quarterly Review.
What are you working on?
I’m working on a poem called “1969,” about the night of my conception in Spring Garden, Ala. It’s about a lot of other things too, though I don’t really know how much they are related to the image that gave rise to the poem: the idea of peering through a window and catching my parents in the act of making me. I’m the father of two small kids now, and as I listen to the patter of their little feet it’s sometimes easy to imagine I’m my father, in a very different role in my own childhood drama. I’ve written a draft of the poem that I love but don’t understand at all, and which I now recite to myself every morning as I ride my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge. It has a metrical structure that gives the lines the sound of sense, though I really don’t know if they make much sense at all. Buzz Aldrin came into the poem for some reason, and Yuri Gagarin. And the Apollo 11 capsule, which did indeed streak across the sky in the summer of 1969, when some version of the scene I have imagined must have actually taken place. I don’t know what I will ever do with the poem, as I’m not at all sure it works. But nonetheless at some point every day I find myself reciting (and revising) it under my breath. For the past several months it’s been my boon companion.
How much time — if any — do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?
While I depend on the Web for a great deal (including the correct spelling of “Gagarin,” above), I think of it as a curse. I learned this again recently when a friend said I should hawk my poetry on Facebook. With trepidation I created an account, and absent-mindedly clicked OK when the site asked if it could scan my address book After lots of flickering green lights, up came the profiles, with photos, of everyone to whom I have ever sent an e-mail: old students doing Jaeger shots at Daytona, an old colleague playing the banjo, random strangers posed with dogs, and children, and dolphins, and skateboards, and cars. Among my “Friends” were many despised enemies, to whom Facebook asked if it could send a greeting, and an invitation to be my “Friend.” I hit cancel, cancel, cancel, and ran screaming out of Facebook. There is no greater blessing for a writer, I think, than the joy of being left alone.
Whose books are generally shelved around yours in bookstores? How does it feel to be sitting between them?
My books are generally between Carl Phillips, a wonderful poet and former teacher of mine, and Sylvia Plath, a poet whose work I love, and who has been, of course, a staple of anthologies and college classrooms for decades. How do I feel when I see my books between them? Rich, and orphaned, and beloved.
By Gregory Cowles
Patrick Phillips is the author of two books of poetry, “Chattahoochee” and “Boy.” His work has appeared in many magazines, including Poetry, Ploughshares and The Virginia Quarterly Review.
What are you working on?
I’m working on a poem called “1969,” about the night of my conception in Spring Garden, Ala. It’s about a lot of other things too, though I don’t really know how much they are related to the image that gave rise to the poem: the idea of peering through a window and catching my parents in the act of making me. I’m the father of two small kids now, and as I listen to the patter of their little feet it’s sometimes easy to imagine I’m my father, in a very different role in my own childhood drama. I’ve written a draft of the poem that I love but don’t understand at all, and which I now recite to myself every morning as I ride my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge. It has a metrical structure that gives the lines the sound of sense, though I really don’t know if they make much sense at all. Buzz Aldrin came into the poem for some reason, and Yuri Gagarin. And the Apollo 11 capsule, which did indeed streak across the sky in the summer of 1969, when some version of the scene I have imagined must have actually taken place. I don’t know what I will ever do with the poem, as I’m not at all sure it works. But nonetheless at some point every day I find myself reciting (and revising) it under my breath. For the past several months it’s been my boon companion.
How much time — if any — do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?
While I depend on the Web for a great deal (including the correct spelling of “Gagarin,” above), I think of it as a curse. I learned this again recently when a friend said I should hawk my poetry on Facebook. With trepidation I created an account, and absent-mindedly clicked OK when the site asked if it could scan my address book After lots of flickering green lights, up came the profiles, with photos, of everyone to whom I have ever sent an e-mail: old students doing Jaeger shots at Daytona, an old colleague playing the banjo, random strangers posed with dogs, and children, and dolphins, and skateboards, and cars. Among my “Friends” were many despised enemies, to whom Facebook asked if it could send a greeting, and an invitation to be my “Friend.” I hit cancel, cancel, cancel, and ran screaming out of Facebook. There is no greater blessing for a writer, I think, than the joy of being left alone.
Whose books are generally shelved around yours in bookstores? How does it feel to be sitting between them?
My books are generally between Carl Phillips, a wonderful poet and former teacher of mine, and Sylvia Plath, a poet whose work I love, and who has been, of course, a staple of anthologies and college classrooms for decades. How do I feel when I see my books between them? Rich, and orphaned, and beloved.
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