Poem of the Week | May 02, 2016
Phillip B. Williams: "The Field"
To celebrate the release of our new spring Editors’ Prize issue, 39.1, we’re delighted to feature a poem by our prize-winning poet Phillip B. Williams. Williams is a Chicago, IL native and author of the poetry collection Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books). He is currently the Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.
Author’s note:
“The Field” is, I think, one of the first poems I wrote where I felt as though I moved finally into the realm of world-making that I wanted so badly to begin. The energy of myth is the focus of this poem and also how easily changes of environment, of what is seen, occur by simply turning the camera just a bit. Whatever is adjacent is itself a new world unto itself; looking out of a window reveals not just a scene but a constant shift of simultaneous seeing. What is at the periphery eventually overpowers what was once in focus though it does not erase what came before. What was once present and eventually dropped out returns. The living horse becomes a metaphor for failure becomes a ghost of a horse. The hunger of the hare and fox is satisfied and shown as satisfied by the “bones left bare.” This is exactly the terrain I want to traverse and I hope I can pull off this vision again.
The Field
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