Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, Philip Lopate received a Bachelor's degree at Columbia University and a Doctorate at Union Graduate School.
His most recent book of poetry, At the End of the Day (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010) brings together the majority of his poems, most of which were written during his youth. In the preface to the collection, Lopate writes:
"Though I am known today mostly as an essayist, occasionally as a fiction writer, for about fifteen years I wrote poetry...When I look back at those years during which poetry formed such an important part of my identity, I am tempted to rub my eyes, as though recalling a time when I ran off and joined the circus."
His first book, The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open (Sun Press 1972), was followed shortly thereafter by The Daily Round (1976).
He is also the author of numerous essay collections, including: Notes on Sontag (Princeton University Press, 2009), Portrait of My Body (1996), Against Joie de Vivre (1989), and Bachelorhood (1981). He has also written the novels, Two Marriages (2008), The Rug Merchant (1987), and Confessions of Summer (1979). Getting Personal (2003) gathers selected writings from both his prose and poetry.
Of his work, The poet Marie Ponsot writes:
The pleasures of Lopate’s poems are urban and urbane. He takes notice, he reports, he has a heart. And more: he stirs in us literature’s ungovernable alchemic hope, as his truth-saying transforms his anecdotes, and precipitates poems.
Among his many awards are grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Before holding the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, Lopate taught at Fordham, the University of Houston, and New York University. Currently, he also finds time to teach at Columbia University, the New School, and Bennington.
http://www.marshhawkpress.org/Lopate.htm
He lives in New York City.
We Who Are Your Closest Friends
Phillip Lopate
We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.