Late for Work [Paperback]

David Tucker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2006

David Tucker has been writing Late for Work throughout his twenty-eight-year career at top city newspapers. In his poems he follows reporters hustling for stories and captures the beauty of everyday life, lived between breaking headlines.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Newspaperman and poet Tucker has a gift for celebrating the humble bliss of stillness and quiet without intimations of spiritual cachet or self-importance. Instead, he expresses a low-key joy in peacefulness, the act of lingering, and the pleasure of not doing. He writes subtly rebellious poems about days on which nothing obvious happens, the revelations of laziness, and the overlooked and poignant beauty of dust motes in a sunbeam, crows wheeling, and an apple as it falls drunkenly from the tree. Tucker portrays with affection local loafers and bench sitters, and remembers the amplitude and strictures of a Tennessee past. Deceptive in their sturdy plainness, these brick-and-mortar poems are inlaid with patterns as elegant as the swoop of swallows, and images as startling and right as a cat's bowl of milk shimmering as its "moon god." Chosen by Philip Levine as the winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize, Tucker's collection, like a whispered confidence, draws the reader near, and tenderly rewards close attention. Donna Seaman
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Review

"A fine and gentle invocation of humanity against too much urgency....Wonderful work!" --Tom Ashbrook, National Public Radio

"Here is cleverness and delight in language that do what only the best poems do." --Mark Bowden, journalist & author of Black Hawk Down

"[Tucker] keeps his eye focused, with tempered joy and genuine happiness, on how work also enlarges life....Terrific." --Andrew Hudgins

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Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618658688
• ISBN-13: 978-0618658688
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,491,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Real Man Writing Real Poetry, May 20, 2006

By 

John Michael Albert "John-Michael Albert" (Portsmouth NH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Late for Work (Paperback)

When Terry Gross interviewed David Tucker on Fresh Air, my ears pricked right up. So straightforward, so down to earth. He draws on his work -- his real work as an assistant managing editor for the NJ Star-Ledger -- and write poetry as affecting and plainspoken as Auden, Frost, or James Agee in "Knoxville: Summer of 1915." I used to be afraid of writing poetry that revealed, in any way, the culture and time in which it was written and I despised such poetry as trivial and pointless. Now, I am completely intoxicated by it. Here is another poet whose work I hope they dig up 1,000 years from now and say, "Oh. So that's what it was like." Read this. Meet his mother or his father or his grandfather, sit with him on his day off or when he's watching crows or listening to the clothes dryer, read his first person account of the day-to-day, nuts-and-bolts operations of God himself.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joyful, January 14, 2006

By 

Joan Mazza "Author, speaker, poet" (Mineral, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Late for Work (Paperback)

What an upbeat and insightful collection! It's a pleasure to read the poetry of a man in love with life, immersed in the present, attentive to detail and the nuances of language.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reports from life and work, November 12, 2006

By 

Janet H. Austin "painter who reads" (Haverford, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Late for Work (Paperback)

Prize-winning journalist-poet David Tucker gives us news of such things as putting things off,a snowbound airport,hectic glimpses of the newsroom or a voice-mail from what's-his-face.He's an economical writer,who finds the quintessentially perfect words for life's sadness as well as its beauty.His skill at making quiet moments seem like ours, almost made me think I could write poetry too.