cover image Early/ Late: New and Selected Poems

Early/ Late: New and Selected Poems

Philip Fried. Salmon (Dufour, dist.), $19.95 trade paper (162p) ISBN 978-1-907056-57-4

This skillful and memorable first selection can seem like the work of three or four different poets, though wit and civility hold it together. First comes a bevy of poems about God, often comic, and often spoken in His assumed voice: often in stand-alone prose sentences (like the Book of Proverbs) they mix the language of elevated salvation with the debased terms of business and politics: "I regret to inform you that, in the purview of immutable discretion, it has now become necessary to downsize the elect." Verse from Fried's Mutual Trespasses (1988) also looks at%E2%80%94or speaks for%E2%80%94a divine Creator, wittily juxtaposing His omnipotence with human foibles and emotions: "He seemed to sink/ into Himself, a collapsing/ mountain." Big Men Speaking to Little Men (2006), making up most of the last half of this collection, casts aside divinity for carefully ironized versions of family history: nostalgic at times, more outwardly conventional, these pages may nonetheless hold his strongest work. The New York-based Fried (who edits the Manhattan Review) closes with supple, formally acrobatic excerpts from a recent set of sonnets: "I've cornered the market on me, but I'll sell you the shimmer./ When the bubble has burst, volatility is tender." (Apr.)