A Critical Analysis Of Carl Phillips And Double Shadow

For this assignment I elected to read a collection of works by a poet I have grown to become more and more familiar with, the ever so syntactically brilliant Carl Phillips and his collection of poems titled Double Shadow. As a poet, I have been influenced a fair amount by Carl since attending his reading a month ago on October 21st. So when it came to reading a collection of works, I chose to read one the books of poetry I bought from that same reading. With regards to Carl and his literary style, Carl has mastered something that I am striving to reach, not just in poetry, but as an artist and human in general. That “something” I am referring to is this level of contemplation and thought provoking self-reflection. In his poetry Carl often creates a speaker who

But then there comes this sort of coming to light moment for the "shadows" of these things. These can either be a realization that the situation is one to be fond of or one that speaks to the doom the speakers and/or characters find themselves in.

One of my favorite poems in this collection of pieces is titled Through an Opening. It is poem where the speaker recalls two individuals who are “trapped” in captivity after “stepping into the head of a wind god”. This first line is very indicative of the language Carl uses in many of his works and in this collection specifically. This is also an example of Carl’s language can seem to transverse into plains outside of reality. What is also interesting is how he uses this transverse metaphor to relay a complex strings of emotions that the characters experiences. In the next stanza the speakers mentions that they made their prison “a space they could sometimes recognize”. Subsequently going on in the next stanza to state that it “soon looked like a home” full of things such as “a chicken hawk; first stars; /a golden steeple.” From the