Patrick Phillips - Boy
The VRQ Poetry Series, University of Georgia Press
Poetry's magic lies in its ability to articulate feelings and thoughts that you yourself can not express. It brings into focus the blurry images of your mind and allows you to share your new found clarity with others. Unfortunately, mainstream media mostly ignores poetry. But my favorite podcast, The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keiller, bucks this trend and provides listeners with a daily dose of poetry.
During the week of May 4, 2008 the show featured two poems from Patrick Phillips' newest collection, Boy. I have to admit, while I like listening to Garrison Keiller's soothing voice read me poems, I rarely get the urge to buy poetry collections. Like most exercise, reading poetry is demanding and I'm usually too lazy to bother. But after hearing Phillips' "Matinée" and "Falling" I was compelled to buy the collection and dig into some serious verse.
Phillips' poetry works to articulate the transitions of the modern male experience. In "Falling" we meet a man who admits, "The truth is / that I fall in love / so easily because / it's easy," but ultimately he describes, "the only one / I fall in love with / at least once every day." The poem sheds light on how the primal adolescent behavior of cavorting with as many women as possible morphs into the civilized practice of monogamy. Many of the other poems in the collection deal with the role reversals that occur from childhood to adulthood. The verse is always straight forward and easy to understand which, at times, obscures the great depth of each poem.
If you are looking for consistanly poinent insights into the human condition, check out this collection.
