Rowan Ricardo Phillips: “The Triumph of Song” (Poetry Review & Ekphrastic Poem)

henry 7. reneau, jr.

I mean, the only zone I think I might
Know, and by ‘know’ I mean ‘this thing hasn’t
Quite killed me yet’ is the triumph of song.

These are the first three lines of Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ poem “The Triumph of Song.” Although the capitalization, of each first word of each line, creates a sudden stutter-stop sense of dissonance, between form and content and imagery that tends to confuse the parallel mesh of analogy in my train of thought, upon my second reading of the poem I found it easy to sync syntax with the colloquial rhythm of the stanzas once I paid attention to the punctuation, especially the use of the single apostrophe, rather than focusing on the distraction of capitalization. This embodies T.S. Eliot’s concept of the objective correlative, “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” No line of this poem is merely decorative; each is enmeshed in the connective gossamer of historical recall and sensation.

The run-on sentences, in lieu of stanza breaks, is not only a feature of the setting, plot, and theme of this poem but also, crucially, its defining formal feature. Readers are accustomed to thinking of poems as lyrical utterances from a single speaker, but this poem employs a fragmented colloquialism that may set unsuspecting readers back on their heels.   

This poem is written in free verse, with an unambiguous emphasis on nostalgia. The narrator of the poem speaks mainly to a vivid recollection of a defining moment from childhood (“I was twelve / And cupped the soft black sponges to my ears / While sitting cross-legged on a friend’s twin bed . . .”)

The narrator, who we assume is an autobiographical personification of Phillips, recalls the visceral spiritual depth of satisfaction derived from actually mentally reliving a past feeling of epiphanous wonder, linking the speaker’s present euphoria with the past joy and awe felt when first entranced by the poem-craft and narcotic-ingenuity of the song “Strawberry Fields Forever”:

Copied over my memory of where
I was, with whom I was, and even who
I was. All I remember is the song,
All that confident lack of confidence . . . 

is a bliss that is universal as every memory that enforces the elements that recall what happiness, joy, or jubilation in a moment lingers in our grandest nostalgic recollections of childhood. This fourth stanza is also a direct reference to every creative artist's doubts (“All that confident lack of confidence . . .”)  about their finished work. Even when an artist creates something beautiful, there's always the nagging feeling that it could be better. (“Which is what making art is really like.”)

As a poet, I must constantly balance my present level of opinion with exactly what I believed or felt, or thought or assumed during the time I initially composed any of my poems. I find myself regularly having to restrain myself from editing the initial spark from the fire of a completed poem. I'm willing to bet that even Lennon and McCartney wrote some #1 hit songs that they felt they could have done differently, or better.

This poem is an excellent example of the way language can hover over singular moments of our lives and recall the unique intensity, the intimacy and wonder, that made our humanity meaningful, which is the real power of this poem. It clearly incites not just the emotional sense, but the foundational warp and weft of the experience, the energy and vibration of it, and the many ways in which it is tied to the narrator’s personal consciousness and unconsciousness, an awe that can be, sometimes, even undefinable. Rowan Ricardo Phillips, however, has masterfully overcome that obstacle with this conversational reflection on nostalgia as a cathartic human force. (“All of it part physics, part faith, part void.”)

 The Triumph of Song

by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

I mean, the only zone I think I might
Know, and by ‘know’ I mean ‘this thing hasn’t
Quite killed me yet’ is the triumph of song.
All my poems mean that, I think, really —

This is the edge of my observable
Universe: I can’t see what does not sing,
Or what I have not coaxed notes from out of
Thin air. Like the first time I must have heard

Strawberry Fields Forever. I was twelve
And cupped the soft black sponges to my ears
While sitting cross-legged on a friend’s twin bed
As the janky copy of the cassette

Copied over my memory of where
I was, with whom I was, and even who
I was. All I remember is the song,
All that confident lack of confidence,

Which is what making art is really like.
The dark blood zoning forward and backward
In the brain, the heart like grass in a bowl,
And the burning horizon’s sharp swagger

All of it part physics, part faith, part void. 

I want to be a person who can love others and relate to anyone
who has been brought to dust—to be not quite right , and still 
, perfectly within my right .     

(after Rowan Ricardo Philips, “The Triumph of Song”)

by henry 7. reneau, jr.

I mean , the only quantification of tolerance , and inclusion 
I think I might know , and by ‘know’ I mean ‘this someone hasn’t

 tried to kill me yet’ is my open embrace of acceptance , I mean , my
first impression of another’s ‘content of character’ . All my poem

 really means to say , is that I wide-angle perceive—this is the reach
of my limbic peripheral perception : I cannot connect with They

 who cannot accept me for who I am , because of whom They think
I might have been , or assume , will likely come to be—are caustic

 expletives and labels from out of thin air . Like the first time I must
have heard the word ‘Nigger’ aimed at me . I was ten , and just scored

 an impossible goal in an elementary school football game , the token
Negro on an all-white team , running back running with the night

 , as the lynch mob , gunshot-startled sound of the curse word
copied over my memory of where I was , with whom They were , and

 even who I was . What I clearly remember : my Kong-caged rage
, the corrosive rust of shame , and my intimidated surrender to fear

 . All They arrogant , vitriolic lack of empathy , like a broken-chained
anchor left to fester , as barnacled

 , to rust , and my wish to kill with a thought , which is exactly what
the hate that made hate is really like . My exotic , One-Drop blood

 , and my heart beating in retaliation and a strategic , vindictive doom
, charging into They hallowed space of a chipped , white bowl

 , as the retreating horizon distanced ‘I’ from ‘Them’ , the contrapuntal
inequality of it all : part repetition

 , part blind hope , and part black hole , sucking me in and
crushing me to nothing .    

Photo by Carolyn Short

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience. His conviction ignites the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook “physiography of the fittest” (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, his collection A Non-Violent Suicide Poem [or, The Saga of The Exit Wound] was a finalist for the 2022 Digging Press Chapbook Series. His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Zone 3; Poets Reading the News and Rigorous. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.