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
BRAD LEITHAUSER is a widely acclaimed poet and novelist and the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship. This is his seventeenth book. He is a professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and divides his time between Baltimore and Amherst.
Wildly different from the first collection I read - voice is more mature, settled into a style that still resonates but keeps you removed and off-kilter in (mostly) natural environments. Really appreciate the techniques at play, but didn't stir the soul like Hundreds of Fireflies for me.
I actually enjoy Brad Leithauser's writing a lot, both his fiction and his poetry. But it's his wife's - Mary Jo Salter's - poetry that really gets under my skin.
(Then there's the time I waste speculating on what it must be like to grow up in a household where both your parents are poets. One imagines their daughter waiting until she's twelve before finally uttering her first sentence, a fully polished gem...)