Philip Metres
Posted in Past Guests
Born in San Diego, Philip Metres grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. Since receiving a Ph.D. in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Indiana University in 2001, Metres has written and translated a number of books and chapbooks, including Sand Opera (2015), I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (2015), abu ghraib arias (2011), Ode to Oil (2011), Primer for Non-Native Speakers (2004), and A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (2003).
His writing has appeared widely, including in Best American Poetry and has garnered two NEA fellowships, two Arab American Book Awards, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, five Ohio Arts Council Grants, the PEN/Heim Translation Grant, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Anne Halley Prize, the Creative Workforce Fellowship, and the Cleveland Arts Prize.
He is a professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, where he lives with his wife Amy and two daughters.
Compline
That we await a blessed hope, & that we will be struck
With great fear, like a baby taken into the night, that every boot,
Every improvised explosive, Talon & Hornet, Molotov
& rubber-coated bullet, every unexploded cluster bomblet,
Every Kevlar & suicide vest & unpiloted drone raining fire
On wedding parties will be burned as fuel in the dark season.
That we will learn the awful hunger of God, the nerve-fraying
Cry of God, the curdy vomit of God, the soiled swaddle of God,
The constant wakefulness of God, alongside the sweet scalp
Of God, the contented murmur of God, the limb-twitched dream-
Reaching of God. We’re dizzy in every departure, limb-lost.
We cannot sleep in the wake of God, & God will not sleep
The infant dream for long. We lift the blinds, look out into ink
For light. My God, my God, open the spine binding our sight.
–
From Poetry (February 2012)
Links
- Poet’s website
- Poet’s blog
- “At the Borders of Our Tongue,” Interview by Fady Joudah. LA Review of Books. 23 February 2015.
- Review of Concordance of Leaves. Blackbird. Spring 2014.
Media
Seminar with Mark Nowak | March 1, 2016
Reading with Mark Nowak | March 1, 2016