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Early/Late: New & Selected Poems
Early/Late: New and Selected Poems draws from Philip Fried's previous four collections of poetry. These highly praised books explored such themes as the tribulations of a vulnerable deity and the intersection of personal myth and historical moment. The new poems, in a section titled "The Emanation Crunch," are haunted by the current financial turmoil and possessed by the disembodied voices that multiply in our world of simulacra. "This skillful and memorable first selection can seem like the work of three or four different poets, thought wit and civility hold it together."-Publishers Weekly
- GenresPoetry
162 pages, Paperback
First published April 28, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 23, 2016
Phil Fried is a New York poet who has been writing poetry, and editing the poetry magazine he founded called The Manhattan Review, since longer than I have known him, which has been since the mid-1980s. It was in the pages of The Manhattan Review where I first read the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, D. Nurske, Peter Redgrove and many other fine poets and translators. Even with his extraordinary work as poetry editor, however, it is his poetry that has most impressed me. Prior to the New and Selected, Phil published four volumes of poetry: Mutual Trespasses, Quantum Genesis, Big Men Talking to Little Men, and Cohort, and one since, Interrogating Water and Other Poems, which has just been published.
Phil and I are friends so I have been privileged to read and to hear him read frequently. He is an excellent reader and a wryly funny Richard Thompson-like banterer between poems, and I think Phil’s poems are meant to be read aloud. They are often responses (rebuttals, explanations, cross-examinations, challenges) to things as diverse as God, power, experience, trends, corporate entities.
In an early poem, The Good Book, God is a character struggling like any of us to find his place. “God said, ‘My finger sticks / to the dictionary, its pages / are smeared with honey, and I / am a bear for words, including / ‘God’ who I read is ‘a being / …the perfect omnipotent / originator and ruler / of the universe.’ No picture / but just above are photos / of a ‘gnu’ and a ‘goatee.’ / In Heaven I rule alone / but in the democracy / of the dictionary, I’m one of equal neighbors.’” God is an equal neighbor in Phil’s scrutiny too.
One way to look at Phil’s perspective on God is to see it as Job’s revenge. Here the cross-examination in Old Man Among Old Men: “Confess that you are a hopeless voyeur, / flattening your nose to our windows, / loiterer and malinger, / infecting the air and making it scruffy / and your cheek is a lean and greasy scrag / dabbled with driblets of sweat, confess!” Phil is no Christopher Hitchens taking issue with God’s existence, he is Job’s incisive lawyer building a case against God’s job performance.
In more recent poems Phil has looked at the pervasiveness of corporate culture, which has its own mythologies of efficiency, ethics, and performance and reaches even unto Heaven. In Celestial, Inc. corporate realities compel a change notice among the saved: “I regret to inform you that, in the purview of the immutable / discretion, it has become necessary to downsize the elect. // It may seem strange that of the great body of humankind some / like yourself, predestined for salvation, should be laid off. // But please bear in mind that the Boss does not guarantee for / all an eternal position, and even those initially receiving the / wage of grace may be let go.” The notice concludes, cannily echoing the language of corporate sensitivity (sic), “If you have any questions about how your severance reveals / the obscurity of the Boss’s say-so, don’t hesitate to contact me. // Thank you for the services you have rendered, and I wish you / every success in your post-salvation existence.”
Phil has a superb ear for the various specialized languages of religion, science, business, psychology, memory and even of secondary textbooks. In A Textbook Case a high school literature textbook gives voice to its own frustrations. “In a later dream-time, the student-friendly / Era, I constantly wrote to ‘you, / You, you,’ but you grumbled I was ‘heavy,’ / Even as I coddled, caressed / Your every obsession, from sit-coms to hip-hop. / The licensed Fool, amusing with truth, / Jingling cap bells and flaunting motley / Snippets, wooing and instructing / ‘You.” Now Standards are back, you’ll shut up, / Learn archetypes or rhetoric. / The expository essay, ha!” Having gotten something off its chest, the tome concludes, “But my jeremiad, a work that foretells / A people’s destruction, ends in the index. / When the divine afflatus fails. / So as I repeat to each year’s freshmen, / Learn to ignore my implicit appeals / And focus on my scope and sequence.”
In between and among these poems are others of family, travel, politics, the universe, intrusive technology, and even a poem about getting dressed. It is a range of topics and tones, sharing attributes of wit, insight, and craft that grace this fine retrospective and forward-looking collection. All but the first two of six volumes are published by Salmon Poetry (http://www.salmonpoetry.com/) and Early/Late is an excellent place to start.
Phil and I are friends so I have been privileged to read and to hear him read frequently. He is an excellent reader and a wryly funny Richard Thompson-like banterer between poems, and I think Phil’s poems are meant to be read aloud. They are often responses (rebuttals, explanations, cross-examinations, challenges) to things as diverse as God, power, experience, trends, corporate entities.
In an early poem, The Good Book, God is a character struggling like any of us to find his place. “God said, ‘My finger sticks / to the dictionary, its pages / are smeared with honey, and I / am a bear for words, including / ‘God’ who I read is ‘a being / …the perfect omnipotent / originator and ruler / of the universe.’ No picture / but just above are photos / of a ‘gnu’ and a ‘goatee.’ / In Heaven I rule alone / but in the democracy / of the dictionary, I’m one of equal neighbors.’” God is an equal neighbor in Phil’s scrutiny too.
One way to look at Phil’s perspective on God is to see it as Job’s revenge. Here the cross-examination in Old Man Among Old Men: “Confess that you are a hopeless voyeur, / flattening your nose to our windows, / loiterer and malinger, / infecting the air and making it scruffy / and your cheek is a lean and greasy scrag / dabbled with driblets of sweat, confess!” Phil is no Christopher Hitchens taking issue with God’s existence, he is Job’s incisive lawyer building a case against God’s job performance.
In more recent poems Phil has looked at the pervasiveness of corporate culture, which has its own mythologies of efficiency, ethics, and performance and reaches even unto Heaven. In Celestial, Inc. corporate realities compel a change notice among the saved: “I regret to inform you that, in the purview of the immutable / discretion, it has become necessary to downsize the elect. // It may seem strange that of the great body of humankind some / like yourself, predestined for salvation, should be laid off. // But please bear in mind that the Boss does not guarantee for / all an eternal position, and even those initially receiving the / wage of grace may be let go.” The notice concludes, cannily echoing the language of corporate sensitivity (sic), “If you have any questions about how your severance reveals / the obscurity of the Boss’s say-so, don’t hesitate to contact me. // Thank you for the services you have rendered, and I wish you / every success in your post-salvation existence.”
Phil has a superb ear for the various specialized languages of religion, science, business, psychology, memory and even of secondary textbooks. In A Textbook Case a high school literature textbook gives voice to its own frustrations. “In a later dream-time, the student-friendly / Era, I constantly wrote to ‘you, / You, you,’ but you grumbled I was ‘heavy,’ / Even as I coddled, caressed / Your every obsession, from sit-coms to hip-hop. / The licensed Fool, amusing with truth, / Jingling cap bells and flaunting motley / Snippets, wooing and instructing / ‘You.” Now Standards are back, you’ll shut up, / Learn archetypes or rhetoric. / The expository essay, ha!” Having gotten something off its chest, the tome concludes, “But my jeremiad, a work that foretells / A people’s destruction, ends in the index. / When the divine afflatus fails. / So as I repeat to each year’s freshmen, / Learn to ignore my implicit appeals / And focus on my scope and sequence.”
In between and among these poems are others of family, travel, politics, the universe, intrusive technology, and even a poem about getting dressed. It is a range of topics and tones, sharing attributes of wit, insight, and craft that grace this fine retrospective and forward-looking collection. All but the first two of six volumes are published by Salmon Poetry (http://www.salmonpoetry.com/) and Early/Late is an excellent place to start.
December 3, 2012
Philip Fried slides in sideways and surprises me with sly humor. He wakes up to new ways to experience the world. I enjoyed this book very much.
February 27, 2013
Philip Fried
Early/Late: New & Selected Poems
(County Clare, Ireland: Salmon Poetry, 2011)
Wry philosopher, keen observer, funny-serious-fabulous poet, Fried borrows from sources ranging from the public apologies of politicians, to John Calvin, to The New York Review of Books. One poem presents the memo by which the elect find themselves downsized, though Management wishes them “every success” in their “post-salvation existence.” We’re told “God is confused about religion.” Fried even puts words in God’s mouth: “Doctor,” He says in one, “my case is unique, / humanity has broken out / on me like a scarlet rash . . . .” In realms between and including the Almighty and actuarial tables, Fried speaks every language faithfully and eloquently. Rejoice! Read!
--Renee Ashley
Early/Late: New & Selected Poems was reviewed in The Literary Review. "The Lives of Saints" Fall 2011
Early/Late: New & Selected Poems
(County Clare, Ireland: Salmon Poetry, 2011)
Wry philosopher, keen observer, funny-serious-fabulous poet, Fried borrows from sources ranging from the public apologies of politicians, to John Calvin, to The New York Review of Books. One poem presents the memo by which the elect find themselves downsized, though Management wishes them “every success” in their “post-salvation existence.” We’re told “God is confused about religion.” Fried even puts words in God’s mouth: “Doctor,” He says in one, “my case is unique, / humanity has broken out / on me like a scarlet rash . . . .” In realms between and including the Almighty and actuarial tables, Fried speaks every language faithfully and eloquently. Rejoice! Read!
--Renee Ashley
Early/Late: New & Selected Poems was reviewed in The Literary Review. "The Lives of Saints" Fall 2011
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews