New collection by poet Carl Phillips reflects his thoughts on memory and loss

Carl Phillips built a career as a poet and educator in St. Louis, teaching at Washington University for more than 30 years while publishing 16 books of poetry. He frequently writes about everyday moments, the tricks memory can play on the mind and sexual relationships.

Phillips often draws inspiration from the natural world, on long walks with his dog in local-favorite green spaces like Forest Park and the Shaw Nature Reserve. These days he find inspiration at the beaches and parks of Cape Cod, not far from the town where he grew up.

Phillips, 65, quietly retired from Washington University at the end of the last academic year and moved back to Massachusetts with his partner.

He didn’t leave his St. Louis life before making headlines: Phillips won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his book “Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020.”

This month, he unveiled his 17th book, “Scattered Snows, to the North,” published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He wrote it before learning about his prestigious award.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin spoke with Phillips about his approach to poetry, his new book and his recent retirement.

Jeremy D. Goodwin: Did winning the Pulitzer Prize affect your approach at all? Does it get in your head?

Carl Phillips: No. But that's because when I go to poems, it's a very private space. I'm not even aware of an audience at all, except some alternative part of myself, I guess. I think the only time that I became more conscious of it was when this new book was in production. I was aware that this is the first book that I've published since that prize, so I didn't know if there'd be more scrutiny or something. But I turned in the manuscript for this new book before I ever knew of that prize.

Jeremy D. Goodwin: It's interesting for you to say that you're not thinking about an audience. Who are you writing for?

Phillips: I think I'm just writing to try to pin down things in myself that I always think I've vanquished, and then they rise up again. I think we all have things that we're always wrestling with — fears and desires. And I find that writing lays those things to rest for a while. Until they rise up again, and that seems to be the incentive for the next poem. So for me, that's not something where I'm thinking of other people. I'm really just trying to have a private encounter with my own interiority.

Goodwin: Is there a central theme or conceit in your new book?

Phillips: I don't really write in terms of books and themes, but I've learned from what other people have written about it. There's a lot that is about memory and the degree to which memory can and cannot be trusted. I used to think that if we remembered something, that's a way of holding on to the truth. And then I have learned that it's possible for three people to remember the exact same thing differently and to believe each of their experiences is the truth. So what do you do with that?

I was raised to think that the past is something that can be understood and you should want to understand it, because then you'll know more about the present. But I think as I've gotten older, it feels like maybe we can't always make sense of the past. Some things just happened, and things played out the way they did, and it doesn't have to mean anything.

So there's that, and maybe a bit of a theme of mortality, but I think that's just natural from getting older. How one thinks about the world at 30 is different from at 60. It sounds kind of gloomy as a theme, but I think it's just looking at those elements of being a human being and getting older on Earth.

Goodwin: I guess we can’t conquer the past, but maybe we can establish a truce with it.

Phillips: An unsteady truce — but yeah, we can try.

Goodwin: You’re a real poet of the page. It seems that you want to use everything that the physical page offers you: line breaks, punctuation, the way words are arranged. Titles of your poems tend to be significant. You seem to revel in the language of it all.

Phillips: Why would you write poems if you didn't love language? And I am excited at the idea of using language in ways that might be new or surprising to others.

Goodwin: I think you love sentences and delaying the idea that might be coming. Sometimes, reading your work, it seems to be nodding toward a certain meaning, and then that meaning escapes because it curls back in a different direction. And this is a drama that happens as the eye goes from left to right on the page.

Phillips: I'm glad it comes across that way. Yeah, I think of sentences as thought. They're kind of thought laid out, and I'm interested in trying to pursue this thing that I know doesn't exist, the truth. And so I feel like it seems honest to move in one direction and then realize you need to revise your steps. You have to retrace your steps sometimes. And I like the idea of the sentence enacting that.

Goodwin: You've also had another big life change since we last spoke, and that is you retired from Washington University. Are you still in St Louis?

Phillips: I retired two months ago and moved almost immediately, to everyone's shock, back to Massachusetts, where I'm from. It was a quick exit but is no reflection on St Louis or the university. First of all, I wanted to leave before anyone could make a fuss. I don't like parties and being the focus of celebrations. So it seemed nice to just disappear.

I think people act surprised about the whole retirement thing, I think because in academia, so few people retire. It's an easy job to stay in and be old. But I always knew I was going to retire at 65 if I could afford it. I know that's not possible for a lot of people nowadays, but fortunately, I was able to do so.