The Mail From Anywhere: Poems (Review Copy)

The scenery of Iceland, the South seas, and the American South, the awakening of first love, and the meaning of speech are some of the topics treated in this collection of poems by the novelist and critic

Leithauser gauges nature's elemental force as he contemplates a glacier's relentless push or the coiled potency of intertwined pythons asleep on a cage's floor. The title poem of this witty, deeply felt collection is a hymn on our tenuous foothold in the cosmos. A footloose citizen of the world, almost at home in Rome or Bangkok, novelist-poet Leithauser ( Hundreds of Fireflies ) offers us Japanese landscapes, postcards from Reykjavik, soul-baring patter, word-paintings, snapshots from a family album. Peering into a candle's flame or diving to the ocean bottom, he retrieves unexpected images. He spins an ode to his not-yet-born daughter; a wedding calls forth a sad, lovely lament to aging. This third verse collection reveals a poet of substance grappling with love, loss and separation. BOMC and QPB alternates.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Leithauser is something of a superstar among younger poets, remarkably ambitious in terms of technique, determined to master a formal prosody that is a welcome relief from the monotone of much contemporary verse. The serious word play makes many poems a pleasure to read aloud. Sometimes, though, the artifice creaks a bit, overpowering the subject matter. One suspects that a deeper poet is still in hiding, waiting to catch up with the technical fireworks. Dividing the book into poems of place (Iceland, Japan) and what the poet terms "a peopled world," Leithauser develops a larger theme: what it is that connects people over distances of time and place. Both a BOMC and a Quality Paperback Club alternate selection, this is a sensible addition to contemporary poetry collections.
- Kathleen Norris, Lemmon P.L., S.D.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.