Saint Worm

by Hailey Leithauser

Saint Worm , Hailey Leithauser's second poetry collection, collects--sometimes warmly, sometime wickedly--glowworm, bookworm, earthworm, and other earthly and unearthly creatures, including human beings. Leithauser's sparklingly inimitable style mates the serious with the playful, yielding a treasury of quirkiness, inventive turns of phrase, wordplay, and expansive diction, making Saint Worm a collection unlike any other. PRAISE FOR SAINT WORM Surprise is what I treasure most in my reaction to art, and Hailey Leithauser's Saint Worm surprises. Alternately funny and sad, creepy and comfy, disturbing and insightful, the book demands attention. Quirky as Stevie Smith and smart as Marianne Moore, what you hold in your hands is a masterpiece.
--Spencer Reece PRAISE FOR HAILEY LEITHAUSER "Meticulously crafted . . . Leithauser has style to spare, but also substance, and yes, playful, in the best sense of the word, pleasurable and pleasure-seeking . . . This is the trick Leithauser does so well, marrying delightful, silvery rhyme to darker content."-- Los Angles Review of Books "The talent and craft exhibited here is cause for sheer glee . . . Leithauser's agility of expression and biting sense of humor shine through . . . Here's hoping this confident and deft collection will be the first of many from a powerful wordsmith."-- Shelf Awareness ". . . In its playfulness, its confections of wordplay . . . Delightful."-- Boston Review "A frantic argument in favor of obvious beauty, of ornament, and of elaborate jokes, as barriers against something like despair."-- Publishers Weekly "Possessed of an unnatural ability with the language, preternatural grace in form, and an extraordinary capacity to be dead serious with killer humor."-- Women's Voice for Change "Hailey Leithauser's intoxicating first collection, understands the physical nature of words and sounds. Her poems bounce along several registers, surprising us with their diction and resulting music . . . Swoop stands out as one of the most interesting books of this past year."-- 32 Poems ABOUT THE Hailey Leithauser's debut collection, Swoop , won the Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson First Book Award and the Towson Prize for Literature. Her poems appear in Agni , the Gettysburg Review, Poetry , the Yale Review , and numerous other periodicals, and have been selected three times for The Best American Poetry anthology. She is a recipient of the Discovery/the Nation Prize, the River Styx International Poetry Award, the Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award, and two Individual Artist Grants from the Maryland State Arts Council. She lives quite lazily at the edge of a precipitous wooded ravine a few miles north of Washington, DC, and teaches at the West Chester Poetry Conference.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

Published August 27, 2019

Reviews

[Clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leithauser continues to delight. At times I wanted this collection to lean into the creepiness of its topics a little more but overall it straddled the line between playful and grim quite effectively, and I loved the way Leithauser constructed sets of poems within the book.
Favorites:
Arrhythmia
I Shall Name the Worms
Slow Danger
Angels
Wanderlusts

[Lynn DiFerdinando]

There are two entries for this book?? Weird.
Liked it pretty well. I’m too straightforward for some of her metaphors tho! Faves: Octopus, Slow Danger, Glow Worm, Mary, The Distance of Objects, Minnows

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her words play on your tongue like Pop Rocks.

[Martha Silano · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is Leithauser’s close observation of the world and its creatures that inures me to Saint Worm. We are treated to the benefit of a poet turning her attention to the music of wrens and sparrows, the “Clack, chatter, / Rattle, rasp, rattle” of crows.

I love a good list, and in this regard Saint Worm does not disappoint: “Garamond, / Blackadder, / Pristina, Script; / here is / the clambake, / potlatch, / a shinny, a picnic, / a barbeque, blow - / out, stick / a fork / in it slowly.” Leithauser’s ear is finely tuned; her poems are a treat to all in us that long for song.

These poems dazzle with their wit and whimsy. In “Glowworm,” (one of my favorites), the words of a worm mirror Leithauser’s deftness at lighting up our brains and hearts: “I am bright and quiet; / I am blithe and ardent; / I am softly, briefly / urging: Garner in / my hand-cupped spark.”

I highly recommend this collection for its surprising rhythms and playfully-delivered wisdom.