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Citing Frank O'Hara as his main source of inspiration for "The Daily Mirror" -- he refers admiringly to O'Hara's "I do this I do that" poems, a moniker O'Hara himself would have loved -- Lehman wrote at least one poem every day for two years, and pulled together selections (anywhere from seven to 20 for each month) into the book we have before us. The result takes us through a full year, with each poem appearing chronologically under the day it was written. Lehman became enamored of the experience: "Writing a poem began to seem as natural as taking a walk," he marvels. "Inspiration was not something you needed to sit and wait for. It was something that came to you."

The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry David Lehman Scribner, 158 pages Poetry Buy this book at B&N.com

Now, creating art is rarely as unconscious as going for a stroll (unless, of course, you're Frank O'Hara), so this perspective has its dangers. Lehman admits that he occasionally missed days and that he changed the dates on certain poems that appear in the book when he wanted to save more than one from the same day. All of this is evidence that it isn't possible to crank out poem after poem while still upholding a certain standard of quality, and that there isn't any reason to pretend otherwise. Perhaps it would have been more honest for Lehman to let the book come to us as it came to him, warts and all. No doubt that tactic would have destroyed the momentum of "The Daily Mirror," but at least we'd get to watch the poetic mind in action, blunder next to revelation.

The happy fact, however, is that whatever manipulations exist behind its form, Lehman's book is a good read. This probably has to do with his attention to the stricture that "however casual a poem may seem, however nonchalant, it has to work as verse -- it must transcend the occasion of its making as only real poems do." It may also have a lot to do with his O'Hara-as-muse stance; O'Hara jammed everything he could into his work, once commenting, "What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems."

Whatever editing or culling Lehman has done, he has managed to get an awful lot of life into his book. Perhaps he's revealing something of what challenges him as a poet when he comments in his introduction that "The dailiness of the poems may act as a corrective to artificial poetic diction. It may keep the poem honest by rubbing its nose in the details of daily life."

When you're charging ahead full speed, there isn't time to do anything but chronicle whatever hits your path. If you're a good writer with a decent ear and a whole lot of human sympathy to boot, some of what results will come out quite well.

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