Revitalizing the tradition of the urban pastoral, The Daily Mirror picks up where Frank O'Hara left off, and the message is clear. The Daily Mirror is filled with what are clearly real events and people in the poet's life. In others, Lehman pierces the surface that he perceives, pinning it to a personal memory or to history or, wonderfully, to both. Thus, although the poetry is grounded in the whirlwind exterior of what presents itself to the senses, its sources are more complex. It is so fleeting, in fact, that if we are not keenly alert to it, not sufficiently receptive, we will miss it without knowing that it has come and gone.
Happiness is feather-light, ephemeral, a dust that fails to settle.
Yet, Lehman suggests, it can nevertheless be deeply experienced. The point is not to ignore its fleeting manifestations, the small kindnesses and gratitudes given and received. Each of these meanings is explanatory of The Daily Mirror .