Items related to The Odd Last Thing She Did: Poems
The Odd Last Thing She Did is Brad Leithauser's fourth book of poems--and his first collection in eight years.
Once again his poems evince a profound love of nature and a mastery of poetic forms. But they also reflect a deepening interest in storytelling, as Leithauser, who has also published four novels, here brings the narrative drive that propels his fiction into the domain of verse.
With compassion and imagination, Leithauser enters into the mysteries of lives both real and fictional: a middle-aged businessman who marries the identical twin of his deceased wife; a beautiful young woman whose life ends on a beautiful summer day; an elderly couple conducting a confused, touching romance in a nursing home; a young World War II soldier returning, wounded, to his fiancee.
And, as always, Leithauser's poems about the natural world are both coolly precise and warmly
engaging. A marsh in March, the play of sunlight underneath a bridge, a long-delayed spring, the contemplation of a moonless earth--all lead the poet, and ultimately the reader, into meditation and wonder.
Once again his poems evince a profound love of nature and a mastery of poetic forms. But they also reflect a deepening interest in storytelling, as Leithauser, who has also published four novels, here brings the narrative drive that propels his fiction into the domain of verse.
With compassion and imagination, Leithauser enters into the mysteries of lives both real and fictional: a middle-aged businessman who marries the identical twin of his deceased wife; a beautiful young woman whose life ends on a beautiful summer day; an elderly couple conducting a confused, touching romance in a nursing home; a young World War II soldier returning, wounded, to his fiancee.
And, as always, Leithauser's poems about the natural world are both coolly precise and warmly
engaging. A marsh in March, the play of sunlight underneath a bridge, a long-delayed spring, the contemplation of a moonless earth--all lead the poet, and ultimately the reader, into meditation and wonder.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Brad Leithauser is a novelist in addition to being a poet, so perhaps the strong narrative drive in his poetry is not surprising. In The Odd Last Thing She Did, he focuses his attention on two of his favorite subjects, nature and the strange workings of the human heart. The title poem, for example, explores the suicide of a beautiful young woman who is "So gifted, bright, and only twenty-three": "Attention will come to fix upon / This odd last thing she did: leaving / The car running, the headlights on. / She stopped--it will-transpire--to fill / The tank a mere two miles down the road." In 16 sonnet stanzas, Leithauser describes not only the young woman's actions but also the reactions of the public in the days that will follow: "What's truly tragic's never allowed / To stand alone for long, of course. / At each moment there's a crowd..."
From the Back Cover:
Not every poem is quite so starkly tragic. In "Play" Leithauser contemplates a scene on the river from the vantage point of a canoe, and comes to some conclusions about the state of the universe: "...Might it not / be play, purely, that slides the one net / inside the other--the selfsame urge that bends / monkey tails into question marks, lends the clownfish bands/of motley, builds of blackness, the more multi-mooned / of our planets and the see-through microplace of a diamond?" Whether describing the love life of a notorious aunt or comparing a marsh in March to the aftermath of a party, Leithauser brings both an imaginative use of language and rhythm and a dramatic sense of story to every poem.
"A rhyming family man, amateur cosmologist, and addict of intricate stanzas, Leithauser warms the past and present with his lovingly intense scrutiny and powerfully compressed phrases."
--John Updike
--John Updike
"A solid reputation for mastery is sustained and reconfirmed in this brilliant cluster of dazzling, touching, witty and deeply felt poems. Borne confidently on the strength of an unfailing talent, we are conveyed through the drunken arithmetic, along nimble caperings of the mind, to exotic margins of a world both delicate and adamantine, where it is revealed to us how perilously delight or heartbreak teeters on the pinpoint of a word."
--Anthony Hecht
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- PublisherKnopf
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0375401415
- ISBN 13 9780375401411
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages83
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The Odd Last Thing She Did: Poems
Published by
Alfred A. Knopf
(1998)
ISBN 10: 0375401415
ISBN 13: 9780375401411
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Hardcover
First Edition
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. Gray cloth, lettered in gold foil. New/as issued, pictorial dust jacket. [xi],84 pp. 1st ed. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Book. Seller Inventory # 054703
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