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

by Phillip Lopate

Poetry. Though known today mostly as an essayist, Phillip Lopate worked seriously as a poet for fifteen years during the 1970s and 1980s. As Henri Cole "Phillip Lopate may be an American ambassador of nonfiction, but he is also a youthful, taciturn, love-seeking New York poet, whose poems--plainspoken, personal, darkly humorous--quietly gather strength while confronting the beautiful and ugly in city life. I admire their vitality and honesty."

Genres: Poetry

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2010

About the author

Phillip Lopate is the author of three personal essay collections, two novels, two poetry collections, a memoir of his teaching experiences, and a collection of his movie criticism. He has edited the following anthologies, and his essays, fiction, poetry, film and architectural criticism have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The Paris Review, Harper's, Vogue, Esquire, New York Times, Harvard Educational Review, Conde Nast Traveler, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School and Bennington.

Reviews

[Daisy]

The Court of the Two Sisters
by Phillip Lopate

The slow green fans turning in the courtyard
Of the classy restaurant in New Orleans;
The green napkins and the Negro waiters
Advancing in their bright green uniforms, superiorly
Filling the large water goblets dusty in the sun.
The hot rolls with curled butter shells like snails
And the enormous breakfasts served at all hours
Of Eggs with lemon sauce, asparagus, ham and toast points;
Cold creamed shrimp soup, oranges.
I read two newspapers at once, starting with sports;
Crowding the tablecloth with unwanted sections.
And when I was too stuffed to go on
I ordered a chickory coffee, dark and bitter
And a Charlotte Russe bursting with whipped cream.

"The Court of the Two Sisters" by Phillip Lopate, from At the End of the Day. © Marsh Hawk Press, 2010.

[Amy Lou Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

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,” but they carry 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. Mature, sharp, and desperately human.