John Phillips, Language Being Time

 

THE POINT

Why add more
words to the
too many there
already no one
pays much
attention to or
acts differently
after reading
as if the point of
it all were acting
differently which
hopelessly it is

It took some time for me to get to, but I am finally moving through British poet and expat currently living “in the hills of central Slovenia,” John Phillips’ fifth full-length poetry collection Language Being Time (Shearsman Books, 2024), a book that follows his Language Is (Sardines Press, 2005), What Shape Sound (Skysill Press, 2011), Heretic (Longhouse, 2016) and Shape of Faith (Shearsman Books, 2017) [see my review of such here]. His short lyrics each sit the small measure of a koan, thoughtfully offered and considered, held with a small turn. His are not the extreme and casual densities of poems by such as Cameron Anstee [see my review of his latest here] or the late Nelson Ball [see my review of his selected poems here], but something quieter, looser, and at times, more flexible, subtle.

He writes in small turns, poems that occasionally offer a narrative hinge mid-way, where the poem might alter direction, or a straight line heading somewhere other than you might have been thinking, through a deeply thoughtful and engaged poetics. Listen to this short poem, “DISPENSATION,” in full, that reads: “History begins / when loss is / saying what / no one present / understands / this going / towards when / & where / no tense / makes sense [.]” As well, I appreciate this note set just at the end of his acknowledgements, hinting at further engagements, which I would be interested to hearing more than this single hint of what is most likely far larger, and ongoing (including with another favourite of mine, American poet John Levy): “Certain poems are from collaborations with John Levy and James Stallard in which we responded to each other’s words.”

REPLY

This poem isn’t written
until you finish
                          reading it