A few weeks ago I attended the Carl Philips reading. He was straight foward and got down to business, and didn't explain his poems after he read them because he felt that they were self expanitory. I would have liked a little more explanation, because I was lost on a few of them. The poems did not relate to the city, but they did have some religious ideas in them. Philips studied through ancient Greek and Roman writers and most of his poems have themes or ideas of passion, transformation, or transcendence in them.
The titles of his poems were very short, most were one word titles which had an idea of what the poem was about, but didn't really help the understanding of the poem. The first poem he read was so quick i didn't really catch any of its points, all I know is that the title is "A Summer." The second poem, "Cloud Country," was a poem about moral freedom and the blurring of love and cruelty. In this poem Philips expresses how people lie to themselves about regretting things to make it easier on themselves. He wonders "have we gone past the point of saving ourselves?" People have to realize their mistakes and accept that we didn't do some things that we should of. The only thing we can do is change it in the future and not make the same mistakes.
In the next poems he read there were certain points made in them that explained human ideals. In his poem "Radiance verses Ordinary Light" he states that "regret, like pity, changes nothing we say to ourselves." Philips is trying to express the point that people have to stop tricking themselves to think that they are better than they actually are in certain aspects of life. In "Forecast" Philips describes that people need uncertainty in their lives, or it wouldn't be worth living. If everything was planned and nothing could go wrong our lives would be so boring and new thought processes wouldn't come along. Along the same lines he states "trust me the way one animal trusts another" in his poem "Close Your Eyes" on the way he thinks people should interact.
Similar to the theme of "Cloud Country" is his poem "Island" which is explaining the acceptance of ourselves and that there are no worse or better parts of ourselves. Philips believes that there are spaces of moral ambiguity and tension between how we are told to conduct ourselves and how we actually conduct ourselves, which lead to trouble and adventure. This poem connects to some of the ideas in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night or, What You Will. The play of mistaken identities goes along with Philips idea of how people conduct themselves in certain situations.
Twelfth Night is a play about different ideas of love and nobility. In the second half of the play all of the false identities come out and everybody sees who the real people are. Sir Toby, Maria, and the clown fooled both Malvolio and Sir Andrew. Their main ideas came in letters written to and by these characters. Sir Andrew was manipulated into false love from Olivia created by Sir Toby in order to keep his money around. After receiving a letter written by Maria, pretending to be Olivia, Malvolio changes his appearance and his actions in order to catch Olivia's eye and love from false characteristics put in this letter. For example on page 44 Malvolio says "Remember who commended thy yellow stockings,"- and Olivia responds "Thy yellow stockings!" in shock because she doesn't know what he is talking about. On page 69 Olivia sees the letter and says "Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing, though, I must confess, much like the character: but out of question 't is Maria's hand." This is where all mistaken identities come truthful.
Viola, who was pretending to be a male servant, Cesario, looked a lot like her twin brother Sebastian. When Sebastian arrives in Illyria Olivia thinks he is Viola, who she loves, and marries him. The captain believes Viola is Sebastian and thinks he is betraying him by not saying he knows who he is. They all come together in the final scene and all identities are exposed, and all the wrongs are righted, and all the confusion subsides.
Like Philips' "Island" the play is about the differences in which people conduct themselves when they are told to, like Viola being the servant sent to woo Olivia for the Duke, and how they actually conduct themselves, in thruthfulness behind their lies. Just like Philips said, these ways of conduction lead to trouble and adventure, as seen in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.