Overview
As snappy as a dinner jacketās red silk lining, as appealing as a piano interlude in jazz, Brad Leithauserās robust felicity is a balm in grim times. Itās also the perfect vehicle for nostalgia, regret, and surprise, forces that animate his first collection in over a decade. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and deeply thoughtful, this collection balances wisdom and practicality, as with deft care Leithauser easily, often unexpectedly, juggles off-rhymes and old forms and new.Ā
Ā Ā The book unfolds like a five-act play, moving from chattier poems to dramatic denouements. In the collectionās two āDarkerā sections, we meet folks learning to say goodbye, from a three-year-old's cry āI love you so loudā (āA Young Farewellā) to a reckoning with words formed āForty-Five Years On.ā Time presses in continually. In āAbroadā and āAt Home,ā the author shows us himself, in younger form: sixty-six, then twenty-seven, catapulted back in memory to Tokyo by a single bite of food (āThe Old Currentā). Then, eight, and awed to remember the beauty of a lone jet overhead. With Updikean wordplay he recalls: āPorch steps, sunset; a warm, gathering gloom./Behind me, five lives: two parents plus the three/Brothers with whom I share my roomā (āA Single Flightā). Ā Ā
Ā Ā As Leithauser takes the measure of a world expanding behind him, he manages to become weightless, freer, wild again. He also refuses to give up second changes. In the āLighterā interlude, we chance upon āIcarus and His Kid Brother.ā Weāre treated to dactyls and lively quatrains, a sloppy kiss thatās not quite bliss, musings on sobriety, and what comes to pass when ālife turns lickerish and liquoryā (āDouble Dactyls,ā āSix Quatrains,ā āThe Muses,ā and āKisses After Novocaineā). The energies yoked within Leithauserās formalism overflow formality.Ā
Ā Ā Often elegiac and yet packed with humor, contemplative, consoling, and informed by the soul of a storyteller, Brad Leithauserās latest book of poetry is a warming, enrapturing read that returns us to the ebbs and flows of lifeās shores. āIām sixty-six,ā the author writes, āand could anything/Reliably be more heartening/Than stray hints that lifeās brightest events./Are, however far-flung, strung/Along a long old current?ā
This book title, The Old Current (Poems), ISBN: 9780593802809, by Brad Leithauser, published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (February 11, 2025) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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