Synopses & Reviews
David Tucker's debut collection, Late for Work, follows reporters jostling for headlines, evoking the gritty glamour of the newsroom in wry, poignant poems. With a twenty-eight-year career at top city papers, Tucker is on the New Jersey Star-Ledger team that won the 2005 Pulitzer for breaking news. As Lola Haskins praises, "His poems know how important words are, so they don't waste them . . . they penetrate to where people really live . . . so refreshing in our hot and selfish times." With a seasoned journalist's gaze, Tucker finds beauty, pathos, humor, and poetry all around us.
Review
"Veteran newsman David Tucker mixes the plainspoken...language of journalism with surprisingly lyric intensity in the understated poems of his debut collection....It is brimming with promise, and demonstrates that consistency isn't a prerequisite for a strong collection." Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
"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." Booklist
Review
"Here is cleverness and delight in language that do what only the best poems do." Mark Bowden, journalist & author of Black Hawk Down
Review
"A fine and gentle invocation of humanity against too much urgency....Wonderful work!" Tom Ashbrook, National Public Radio
Review
"[Tucker] keeps his eye focused, with tempered joy and genuine happiness, on how work also enlarges life....Terrific." Andrew Hudgins
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
David Tucker is the winner of the 2005 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for poetry, judged by Philip Levine. Assistant managing editor of the New Jersey Star-Ledger metro section, he's also been a reporter and editor at the Toronto Star and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Tucker studied poetry with Donald Hall and Robert Hayden and is a graduate of the University of Michigan.