“No Kingdom” by Carl Phillips [pg. 587]

At first glance, this poem is more of a compilation of ideas than complete concrete thoughts. The lines in this poem are noticeably short and the text of the poem is shaped narrow. It makes it a quick read which gives me the idea that it is a series of quick thoughts. The only things that slow the reading are the commas and line breaks; it is really choppy to read. The rhythm of it seems very jumpy from idea to idea. It makes the speaker think of one idea after the another. Phillips puts many images into the poem in the form of nouns. Even though the sentences make little grammatical sense, the pictures of the poem give it its overall feeling: humid and cloudy. There is not much brightness in the poem to suggest something optimistic, nor is there any to suggest otherwise. It’s the words, such as “plague”, “empty”, and “small”, which gave me that overall feeling. The poem also contains many multi-syllabic words. It suggests that deeper thinking goes into the poem. Even though not much is said, much is implied. I think that the poem gives the feeling of being burdened with guilt. The entire poem is composed of four sentences; the first three are long while the last line is two lines long. What caught my eye is that one of the last lines contains “no kingdom” hidden between other words. That line keeps getting my attention since it seems important to the poem as a whole.