Carl Phillips - Sunlight in Fog

        Maybe what a river loves most
about the banks that hold it—that appear to hold it—
is their willingness or resignation to being
        mere context for the river’s progress
or retreat, depending. And maybe how the cattails
and reeds thrive there means they prefer
        a river-love—how the river, running always away
the way rivers tend to, stands as proof that reliability
doesn’t have to mean steadfast, how the river
        itself would say so, if a river could say … I’ve forgotten
entirely what it felt like to enter his body
        or to be entered by his. But not how he’d spend
long afternoons—as if to look away had become
impossible—just watching his face get routinely
        blurred by the river’s motion, like an
inside-out version, psychologically, of a painting
where the model sleeps beneath a portrait
        of himself not sleeping, if that makes
any sense … Not, I mean, that he wasn’t capable
of love, but that—like history already mistaking itself
        for myth again—he loved a river.

First, some exciting news. I was asked by the awesome Maya C. Popa whether I’d be interested in running a workshop-type-thing with the Conscious Writers Collective on my close reading process. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity. Then I realized I have to actually put into concise and coherent words what my process is. And so naturally now I’m paying way more attention to my process than I have in 20 years, which makes for an interesting combo of fun and terrible. I’m being hyperbolic here. But still, I’ve decided to sprinkle in some background info on close reading in general because I find it to be interesting. Also shout out to Keith Christiansen because he’s been asking me to explain my process for a year and yeah-but’ed the hell out of him.

Anything I say in these next few lines is just a pale shadow of the amazing context and background that Andrew DuBois gave in the introduction to Close Reading, a textbook I was gifted by a friend named John Roach (he’s no one famous or that you should know, I just think he deserves full mentioning) sometime in the early 2000s. I don’t have that original copy anymore, but I read it like it was fucking scripture in my early 20s and bought a used one a couple years ago to revisit. I recommend it, if that’s your sort of thing.

The close reading that we think of when we say close reading really gets its start with John Crowe Ransom’s 1941 New Criticism. This book might sound familiar because it really pushed the idea that Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Yeats, etc., were at the cutting edge of poetry because of their textual complexity. There’s a whole lot to unpack there and many discussions to be had (that have been had) about the validity of Ransom’s argument, but none of that takes away from the fact that he effectively created a standard of how poetry should be analyzed. Ransom’s approach (which was really I.A. Richards’ approach some 12 years earlier in the book Practical Criticism) focused on things like diction, syntax, and structure. You may have noticed I really like the Ransom/Richards approach. I think it is super important, but maybe not for the same reasons that either of those gentlemen thought. Although Ransom was the first to use the term close reading, our modern interpretation includes an idea that was first suggested three years before Ransom’s book even came out. But more on Louise Rosenblatt next time.

Today’s poem is really a great place to focus on the structure of the lines themselves. Carl Phillips doesn’t really need an introduction for fans of poetry, but if you only dabble here and there it might be worth noting the guy is a rockstar. I mean, he won a fucking Pulitzer (which may mean everything or nothing depending on who you ask, but I choose to see it as pretty dope). This piece today is from his 2024 collection Scattered Snows, to the North. The first thing that you should pick up from it is the inconsistencies along the left margin that feel both sporadic and rhythmic, because they are. Go back and spot the pattern. Indent, 2 unindented, indent, 2 unindented, etc. This is only broken to create symmetry on the 11th line at the very center of the poem. What this does is create the feeling of inconsistency while our brains, evolved for pattern recognition, push us to feel some sense of regularity. There’s expectation and also room for surprise. It feels like a river.

The rhythm of the piece is also carried by the choices in punctuation. There are only 3 periods in the entire poem, one for each stanza. The reliance on ellipses and em dashes instead creates a sort of flow of consciousness that feels a lot like a river of thoughts falling from someone’s mouth. Are you seeing the trend here?

Despite the flow, there is also a hesitance that permeates the piece. In the second line, the speaker corrects himself “about the banks that hold it—that appear to hold it,” leaving us with a feeling that this is thought in the raw. The rest of the stanza is a sequence of safeguards against misspeaking. Willingness or resignation, progress or retreat. This is someone trying his hardest to explain without leaving room for the listener to shut him out. A pause here for some sonic appreciation: “and reeds thrive there means they prefer /a river-love—how the river, running always away” Say those lines out loud. Hear the play of the “r” sounds blend into the vowels that surround them. The sounds flow together so smoothly that the disruption of Phillips’ created notion of “river-love” gets a bright spotlight shone directly onto it. We were just told of the many seemingly contradictory qualities of the river-bank system so we understand the emotional weight that comes with that term.

And after all of these attempts to shoehorn the analogy that the speaker has allowed us to witness, he drops pretenses altogether in the second stanza. We are given a visceral, intimate “I’ve forgotten /entirely what it felt like to enter his body or to be entered by his.” That period stops us so that we feel this as something real. We are left thinking about the things that fade with time, how even the most passionate love can be washed away by enough space. And when confronted with that ugly reality, our speaker slips back into the riptide of thoughts “like an /inside-out version, psychologically, of a painting /where the model sleeps beneath a portrait /of himself not sleeping, if that makes /any sense”

No, it doesn’t. Not logically. But emotionally, it makes a lot of sense as the sort of mess that memory becomes. The way it is reshaped and moved, not unlike the shore along the river. The rocks are the same, but worn down and displaced slightly. Again, we are given an ellipsis here. And with it comes a pattern in the structure. The ellipsis precedes a bit of reality peeking through the distorted retrospective of our speaker. “Not, I mean, that he wasn’t capable of love,” is an emotional truth as real and heavy as the admission of forgetting the feeling of their sex. These ellipses set the stage for difficult realities. There’s also a soft echo happening in this stanza with motion, version, and portrait. It’s nothing formal, but it creates this sort of slurring or blurring of sounds that helps reinforce the mood.

We get the same sonic stitching in the final two lines, this time with short i sounds. “history already mistaking itself /for myth again—he loved a river.” These sounds lift the words rhythmically like gentle waves coming in to shore. In the end, the speaker reveals that he is, in fact, the river. This poem was a self reflection. It reframes the entire analogy and forces a reread of the opening lines with this new coloring of excuse.