Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Messy Tenderness

Messy Tenderness

Lovitt

Paperback

Metaphysical GeneralGeneral Poetry

Publisher Price: $18.00

ISBN10: 0975388169
ISBN13: 9780975388167
Publisher: First Thought Press
Published: Feb 14 2026
Pages: 234
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.49 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

What luck-a new bounty of poems by Robert Lovitt.

Lovitt's love of quotidian detail, sensitivity to relational energy, and ear for the rhythms of the natural world echo through messy tenderness alongside a stark eye on mortality. With a careful 108 titles, we're invited to center ourselves one poem at a time, one word after another, in lines spun from decades of memories and emotion. Lovitt's work is as human as ever: we're here for break-ups, workdays, yardwork, convalescence, new love, mattress shopping-even a food handler's permit class. Most striking for this middle-aged reader were the multiple moments of caring for or being with a person preparing to leave their earthly body. Amid the mirth and yes, the mess, there is great tenderness: we find resilience and affirmation in his expressions of witness (for life and its bookend; for his loved ones, and for us). Lovitt gathers all this rich pathos around the tellings of departure to cast them in a brilliant light of aliveness only he could conjure.

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