Late For Work: American Poetry Capturing Everyday Life Between Breaking Headlines

by David Tucker, Philip Levine (Foreword by)

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.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

1.
This book is beautiful, and I am having trouble with words saying how much. I picked this up because I am frustrated journalist, and by that I mean, I've always wanted to be one but ended up doing something else, and by that I mean, I was supposed to study journalism but my parents did not approve of my writing life (so much story there, but we'll leave it at that). The only time I worked for a paper was in high school, and I have missed that little 'newsroom' so much these past few years. While in the university I once toyed with the idea of a poetry collection involving the news—maybe I'll have a go at it again.

2.
Let me say it again: this book is beautiful. Philip Levine wrote one of the best forewords I've ever read, liking David Tucker to Fernando Pessoa: "...the poet who seems to have lived his whole singular and short life in a state of 'disquiet' and yet could create an emblem of peace that — curiously enough — electrifies the reader." When I read that I realized: this is how I want my work to be. No, let me clarify: this is how I want my life to be.

Levine also quotes this wonderful excerpt from Pessoa's The Keeper of Sheep:

I take myself indoors and shut the window.
They bring the lamp and give me goodnight,
And my contented voice gives them goodnight.
O that my life may always be this:
The day full of sun, or soft with rain,
Or stormy as if the word were coming to an end,
The evening soft and the groups of people passing
Watched with interest from the window,
The last friendly look given the calm of the trees,
And then, the window shut, the lamp lit,
Not reading anything, nor thinking of anything, not sleeping,
To feel life flowing over me like a stream over its bed,
And out there a great silence like a god asleep.

3.
Maybe I have read this at the most opportune time, right when I am trying to piece my life back together and have been, for the most part, so deep into disquiet that my soul is working overtime to achieve peace. I have also read this on one of the most harrowing afternoons I've had this year — I was trying to keep my mind off the fact that my family is somewhere stranded in the city, my father and sisters in the car with the flood everywhere, trying to get to safety. The day before had brought more rains than usual; my city was submerged, in fact, for awhile it looked like there was no city. Houses disappeared under the water, people were stuck on roofs; suddenly it was 2009 all over again, and I am walking in the night, in the middle of a highway, in a mass exodus, waist-deep in the flood, soaking wet, afraid of falling into open manholes, wondering if I'll ever get home. I remember this and I try to read Late for Work to calm my nerves, try not to think, but they were only supposed to get supplies and come back as soon as possible.

4.
One of my favourites in this collection:

March Morning
David Tucker

The day has hardly started and the light
in the cedars is late and the ragged clouds hurtling
over New Jersey are late and the news meeting
I'm on my way to is already old news
in the rings of the oak, and the irritable wasps
are darting under the eaves troughs,
so early this year that they may as well be late. The breeze
that wanders through an open window
is cool and expected in China next month,
so it is late. The robin in the yard
tilts its head sideways to study the blur
I make as I roar past, a half-hour late.
And a snowflake settles on my sleeve,
a tiny voice saying laaaate
as I walk to the office, as it disappears.

I know this feeling, perhaps a little too well.

5.
More than peace, there is tenderness here, humility. Wisdom, too, and a sense of being that in some ways have accepted that there will always be questions, and probably not enough answers, and it is okay. That life is unfinished — acres / of the unfinished (as he writes in Putting Everything Off) — and all we can do is say yes, yes.

6.
Here: I am brought to my knees—

How peaceful to walk out into the world
we just wrote about while it shimmers
as if just made, to walk through the steam
of sewer vents, past the crouched, drizzling doorways
of bedraggled Newark, having told what we knew,
which we always find out wasn't that much after all.
And to then drive away as the forklifts
wobble across the loading dock, raising
the unsteady bales of the morning edition.

— from Morning Edition

7.
The power has come back on, finally, after more than twenty-four hours. My sister has called to tell me they're safe and have found high ground. Everywhere else is still flooded, and the torrential rain persists. All roads leading back home have waters at ten to twenty feet — to go through would be suicide. It is painful, but I say, don't come home and stay where you are.

I put down the phone, survey the space around me. There is much to be done. I would spend the night mopping up the floor because the roof has started leaking. I would wake in the morning to find myself feverish, the cold seeping through my bones.

I repeat Tucker's poems in my mind like a prayer: you forget how beautiful the early evening can be, and, ...so broken / and so ready to love again.

8.
there, then not there—

Maybe I'll be alright after all.

[Frankie Laird · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love poetry that focuses on small anecdotal moments and human relationships, and Tucker's volume does just that, additionally centering around the lives of those of us who get lost in that morning cup of coffee for just long enough to be late for work.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite winning a writing prize, this collection of poetry is reasonable and satisfying. It leaves out nothing important.
“Through the open window, in the heavy summer evening, a catbird lights on the backyard fence and sings the song it always sings, the song of staying in the same town all your life.” Always Here (21)
Tucker’s poems have a loyalty that makes their descriptions beautiful rather than condescending. His taste for truth comes through clearly, perhaps journalistic influence, but the nature of poetry as a medium allows just a sliver more affection to come through. As such, his narrative persona becomes someone the reader likes and trusts.
“A boy walking across the ball field an hour after the game—we’re covering that silence. We have reporters working hard, we’re getting to the bottom of all of it.” And This Just In (15)
The loyalty to place allows Tucker to take time with his work. He notices, in a way that waits to pass judgement, a patience that poetry does not often afford its subjects.
“And these gardens of dust, these palaces of sage grass, orchards of junked cars, I claim for Queen Isabella.” Columbus Discovers Linden, Tennessee (4)
His allusions capture a connection that is not necessarily physical, a connection between place and place in the way they are experienced, a tie that is through the human mind rather than a physical similarity or a simple shared metaphor.
“they come back now one by one, looking down at their notebooks and rubbing their eyes as they slouch to their desks, coats still on, and begin to punch in the names” Messengers (46)
A set of notes on this book can’t omit a comment on his newsroom poetry. He affords the newsroom both the bare physical reality of being a workplace and the inestimable wideness of being a channel through which all human experience is bottlenecked for another day’s print.

[Larry Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this little collection of poems by accident and what a truly great accident it was. I love poems that are simple, lacking in flowery language, and speak to the heart. Add to this, that David is my cousin and writes about our home town and his family, the poems speak to me.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quick jaunt into a man’s reporting career and life through poetry. Some poems were better than others but in some cases, he really knows how to paint a scene.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up David Tucker's poetry collection, Late for Work, because of the words on the back cover: "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."

I was interested in what a reporter/poet would have to say about life at a newspaper -- In another life, many years before I started teaching, I was a reporter for a small town newspaper in Western Pennsylvania. I only stayed at the job for about two years -- mostly because of the pay (or lack thereof) and the simple fact that it was a position with no real chance of advancement. Still, it was a great experience, and I do keep in contact with some of the people I worked with.

At first I was disappointed that all the poems in this collection were not about newspaper work. But I quickly got over the disappointment. Yes, Tucker does captures moments of news and the lives of reporters striving for stories. But much of this book are glimpses of everyday people and everyday life. In fact, I read this book twice to see how he worked a reporter's life into poetry of the rest of the world. The final poem in the collection, "Today's News," is simply stunning. In this poem, the poet states, "Working these long hours/you forget how beautiful the early evening can be." I can relate to this -- news is often ugly, and when I worked at my small town newspaper I saw this ugliness everyday. To make it worse, I often knew the people involved in the news and the ugliness. But this last poem reminds us that no matter where we work, and how discouraging a day at the job can be, that there is still wonder in the world.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of poetry collections (I know I should read more...) but this one is really wonderful. It's about the world of work (the author is a long-time newspaper journalist and editor) and the style and subjet matter is reminiscent of Philip Levine, who voted for it in the Bakeless competition. Really moving work, I think.

[Gustav Klimt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful new voice in American poetry, and, if things keep going as they are, perhaps an important lyric historian of the the world of the newsroom.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best new collections of poetry i've read in a long time