Customer Reviews

At the End of the Day: Selected Poems and an Introductory Essay

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Phillip Lopate's collection melds the wit of Frank O'Hara, the sense of self of Walt Whitman, and the Lopateness of humor and estrangement. He's so honest, he makes me blush. It's as if he knows too many of my secret frailties, as he exposes his own. There are no nouns for many of the emotions portrayed in "In the Time," yet the verse carries the resonance of recognized passions. I want to believe that love is more romantic than portrayed in "Hearts," yet the exacting exposure seems to codify the value of all our failing relationships. Nobody mixes petulance and charm like Lopate.

Thanks, Amy, for doing my work for me. I just happened upon this and in my excitement reviewed it for amazon.co.uk (check it out, folks) but basically I've been waiting for Phil's 'third book'(?) all my life. It's great that so many poets live so long these days and can still turn out work that equals their best (we won't talk about the other kind, those professionals who've been trading off their mega-reputations for years). Not that I put Phil in the 'elder poet' category, heaven forbid; you need to be pushing 80 for that - so keep at it, Phil! - but it's great that of the shaggier poets who we all thought would fade away so many still hang in there, like all those underground cartoonists and dubious musicians. Sorry this is so incoherent; Phil, like the late Saint Joe (Brainard), seems to have this effect on me. So what is it about his work? Well, I guess tenderness is as good a word as any. Bags of modesty too, not normally considered a poetic virtue, but sincerity and genuineness - genuine genuineness - are rarer among poets than they should be; in fact perhaps artistic endeavour generally is mostly about faking the genuineness. Lopate's disarming preface alone should win converts (though Breton doesn't take an accent, even in Noo Yawk).