The poetry of John Newlove, as presented [in The Fat Man, Selected Poems: 1962–1972] begins in a dark and brooding whimsicality, and moves steadily into utter despair. From the very beginning the protagonist chooses to portray himself as a solitary dominated by fantasy and desire, making "poems babies & love-affairs / out of women I've only seen once," a wanderer on the side of the road "cold / & afraid."…

The safety he finds is in situations which do not involve him in affection or desire; he envies the hitch hikers and their aimless travelling, their "feeling safe with strangers / in a moving car." He reports in drab low-key language on those who are "emptied of desire," on the beer parlour and street life of the small town, where all is directionless and customary….

He finds success a failure, for, recalling what he had wished to become and realizing he has succeeded, he finds that "complete, / I am more empty than ever." He observes the bird that declines "the privilege / of music" preferring to finger "the absolute / wood / beneath," just as he himself prefers plain and unvarnished speech. Sometimes this plain speech of pain results in self-pity as when in "The Dog" he recalls "never thinking anyone / would love me," but the self pity is countered by his sardonic envy of the dog, "damn fool / running and barking / away toward the town." (p. 101)

It is perhaps in contemplating the past, in sharing other lives, that we may discover something to admire, to revere, as in considering the strength of "The Doukhubor," and in "Remembering Christopher Smart" which concludes with the lines

        I see that we all make the world what we want.
        Our disappointment lies in the world as it is.

"Disappointment" is hardly an adequate word to describe the portrayal of humanity in the succeeding poems. The title poem is as brilliantly designed and as vigorous as a Daumier, and it has all Daumier's relish in the grotesque. "The Fat Man," waiting at the crossing light, is nameless, characterless, gross, and en route to an undignified and messy death….

The man portrayed in "Harry" is also a creature of futility and despair. The universe, in the last poems of the book, has become a purgatory, even a hell. Earth is no place to live. (p. 102)

John Newlove's vision is indeed dark. His universe is one of solitude, failure, ugliness and nausea. The only driving forces of life are desire, which is always thwarted, and dreams which are never fulfilled. This world is a place of waste, despair, and desolation…. Newlove's vision is not qualified…. The comedy is never in the slightest life-enhancing, there is no discernible God, and the language is, in the majority of poems, bare of all but the most anguished flourishes. Newlove has, indeed, created a place where no other poet has yet had the courage to go without at least a Swiftian irony, a Websterian rhetoric, or a religious conviction as luggage. The Newlove man (and one is tempted to an ironic play upon the author's own name) is very much a creature of our times, however, as he is also a universal figure—the figure of need, solitude, despair. The poetry itself is enormously well crafted, subtly controlled in tone, and richly various in style, even while remaining consistent to what emerges as an over-all purpose to portray the human tragedy with an economy and elegance that succeed in making the whole book a tribute to courage and a statement of the awesome spiritual strength of man. This Selected Poems, omitting as it does many of the poems of pure reportage and of whimsy which lessened the impact of some of the separate collections is one of the most impressive to have been published in the English speaking world in the last twenty years. John Newlove is now at the height of his powers. One waits impatiently for further developments. (pp. 102-03)