LEITHAUSER, Brad

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Nationality: American. Born: Detroit, Michigan, 27 February 1953. Education: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, B.A. 1975, J.D. 1980. Family: Married Mary Jo Salter, q.v., in 1980; one daughter. Career: Research fellow, Kyoto Comparative Law Center, Japan, 1980–83; MacArthur Foundation Research fellow, 1983–87; visiting writer, Amherst College, Massachusetts, 1984–85; Fulbright lecturer, University of Iceland, Reykjauil, 1989. Since 1991 lecturer, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts. Awards: Harvard University-Academy of American Poets prize, 1973, 1975; Harvard University McKim Garrison prize, 1974, 1975; Amy Lowell travel scholarship, 1981–82; Guggenheim fellowship, 1982–83; Lavan Younger Poets award, 1983; MacArthur Foundation research fellow-ship, 1983–87. Address: 9 Stanton Avenue, South Hadley, Massachusetts 01075–1515, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Hundreds of Fireflies. New York, Knopf, 1982.

A Seaside Mountain: Eight Poems from Japan. New York, Sarabande Press, 1985.

Cats of the Temple. New York, Knopf, 1986.

Between Leaps: Poems 1972–1985. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987.

The Mail from Anywhere: Poems. New York, Knopf, and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990.

The Odd Last Thing She Did: Poems. New York, Knopf, 1998.

Novels

Equal Distance. New York, Knopf, 1985.

Hence. New York, Knopf, 1989.

Seaward. New York, Knopf, 1993.

The Friends of Freeland. New York, Knopf, 1997.

Short Stories

The Line of Ladies. Privately printed, 1975.

Other

Penchants & Places: Essays and Criticism. New York, Knopf, 1995.

Editor, The Norton Book of Ghost Stories. New York, Norton, 1994.

Editor, No Other Book: Selected Essays, by Randall Jarrell. New York, Harper Collins, 1995.

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Critical Studies: "'Yes, but …': Some Thoughts on the New Formalism" by David Wojahn, in Crazyhorse, 32, spring 1987; "Games Computers Play" by David Gurewich, in New Criterion (New York), 7(9), May 1989.

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An initial reaction to the work of Brad Leithauser might well be one of sheer delight in its technical mastery. In his counterpointing of meter and speech rhythm, in his control of the interplay between syntax and line ending, in the adroitness of his use of rhyme, in the delicacy with which he balances monosyllables against polysyllables, and in many other ways, Leithauser's is an exemplary craftsmanship, always exact and purposeful but never merely pedantic. The craftsmanship is at the service of much exact observation, especially of the small and the ephemeral. So in "A Quilled Quilt, A Needle Bed" fallen pine needles are noted and celebrated:

      Under the longleaf pines
   The curved, foot-long needles have
   Woven a thatchwork quilt-threads,
   Not patches, windfall millions
   Looped and overlapped to make
   The softest of needle beds.
 
 
      The day's turned hot, the air
   Coiling around the always
   Cool scent of pine. As if lit
   From below, a radiance
   Milder yet more clement than
   The sun's, the forest-carpet
 
 
      Glows. It's a kind of pelt:
   Thick as a bear's, tawny like
   A bobcat's, more wonderful
   Than both—a maize labyrinth
   Spiralling down through tiny
   Chinks to a caked, vegetal
 
 
      Ferment where the needles
   Crumble and blacken. And still
   The mazing continues … whorls
   Within whorls, the downscaling
   Yet-perfect intricacies
   Of lichens, seeds and crystals.

The subdued wordplay of "thatchwork quilt" or "whorls within whorls," the placing of "glows" in its emphatic position, turning the stanza break into a pause of rewarded expectation, the unforced half rhymes—all typify Leithauser's surefootedness.

Effects of light, especially light reflected in water, often bring out the very best in Leithauser. "Floating Light in Tokyo" is a sustained appreciation of "a jewelled inner city afloat /in light" where "lights on lights are overlaid in repeated /applications." How extraordinarily precise and evocative is the response to a passing duck's disruption of such reflections:

              With regret, then,
   you note an approaching duck, whose wake shivers
 
 
   all reflections; and it hurts a little
   to watch the neat incision being cut, the plush
   collapse begin as the first nudging ripple
   swings outwards. Yet as the duck, in passing,
 
 
   transforms into a swan, the shapely S
   of the neck lit in sudden fluorescent profile, P4 and familiar
      designs begin to coalesce
   within the moat, which soon again will reflect
 
 
   composedly, you'll grant that while the static
   glaze was restful, welcome is this
   queen of birds with the sea-serpentine neck,
   who trails behind her such thrilling rubble.

Leithauser's attention to the evanescent (e.g., in "Angel" or "Hundreds of Fireflies"), whether in the life of insects or in the transience of lights, takes part of its force from a mostly unspoken sense that in their ephemerality such subjects are perhaps fitting emblems of human life. Such a sense is made explicit at the close of "Hundreds of Fireflies." The observation of the gathering fireflies closes with the anticipation of that moment when

                  the silent
   drift of summer through the trees
   signals us, drawn too by light,
 
 
   to another brief firefly season.

Leithauser's earlier work was perhaps least impressive in its treatment of individual human lives. "Two Summer Jobs" offers attractive autobiographical retrospects in which an earlier self can be observed at a distance. A similar detachment operates in the family poems of "A Noisy Sleeper" and in the series of poems on Japan (many of them extremely attractive), which are the work of an observer rather than a participant. In his first two collections Leithauser treats humanity most effectively in the generalization of the epigram rather than in the analysis of individuality. There are wit and formal shrewdness in such epigrams as "The Fame Train"—

   The season's major talents are

     Roaring up the track.

   You can hear them coming: clique

     Claque, clique claque

     

—or in the rueful "Anonymous' Lament"—

   Though love (it's been said) is a perilous game,

      At times I might wish to be bolder—

   Just once to be either the moth or the flame

      And not the candle-holder.

In the poems of the later The Mail from Anywhere, and especially in those of its first section, "A Peopled World," Leithauser demonstrates an increased capacity to register and articulate the individually felt human situation. Poems from family history, such as "Uncle Grant" and "The Caller," combine anecdote with psychological perceptiveness and compassion.

When large selections from Leithauser's first two American collections were republished in a single British volume in 1987, it was entitled Between Leaps. The title is thoroughly apt, for Leithauser's poems are products of composed observation, of a stillness and clarity of seeing and thinking that are unusually free of excess emotional clutter. The work in The Mail from Anywhere is characterized by the same qualities but seems also to add a greater emotional warmth and involvement. Leithauser's apprehension of the world—human and nonhuman—seems to be growing wider and deeper. He is a poet of considerable achievement.

—Glyn Pursglove