The Old Current: Poems
mar. 2025 · Knopf
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MacArthur Fellowshipâwinning poet Brad Leithauser returns with his first new collection in more than a decade, a collection that recalls the delicacy and intimacy of his early, award-winning volumes, and embraces the wisdom of age.
As snappy as a dinner jacketâs red silk lining, as appealing as a piano interlude in jazz, Brad Leithauserâs robust felicity is a balm in grim times. Itâs also the perfect vehicle for nostalgia, regret, and surprise, forces that animate his first collection in more than a decade. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and deeply thoughtful, this collection balances wisdom and practicality, as with deft care Leithauser easily, often unexpectedly, juggles off-rhymes and old forms and new.
The book unfolds like a five-act play, moving from chattier poems to dramatic denouements. In the collectionâs two âDarkerâ sections, we meet folks learning to say goodbye, from a three-year-oldâs cry âI love you so loudâ (âA Young Farewellâ) to a reckoning with words formed âForty-Five Years On.â Time presses in continually. In âAbroadâ and âAt Home,â the author shows us himself, in younger form: sixty-six, then twenty-seven, catapulted back in memory to Tokyo by a single bite of food (âThe Old Currentâ). Then, eight, and awed to remember the beauty of a lone jet overhead. With Updikean wordplay he recalls: âPorch steps, sunset; a warm, gathering gloom. / Behind me, five lives: two parents plus the three / Brothers with whom I share my roomâ (âA Single Flightâ).
As Leithauser takes the measure of a world expanding behind him, he manages to become weightless, freer, wild again. He also refuses to give up second chances. In the âLighterâ interlude, we chance upon âIcarus and His Kid Brother.â Weâre treated to dactyls and lively quatrains, a sloppy kiss thatâs not quite bliss, musings on sobriety, and what comes to pass when âlife turns lickerish and liquoryâ (âDouble Dactyls,â âSix Quatrains,â âThe Muses,â and âKisses After Novocaineâ). The energies yoked within Leithauserâs formalism overflow formality.
Often elegiac and yet packed with humor, contemplative, consoling, and informed by the soul of a storyteller, Brad Leithauserâs latest book of poetry is a warming, enrapturing read that returns us to the ebbs and flows of lifeâs shores. âIâm sixty-six,â the author writes, âand could anything / Reliably be more heartening / Than stray hints that lifeâs brightest events. / Are, however far-flung, strung / Along a long old current?â
As snappy as a dinner jacketâs red silk lining, as appealing as a piano interlude in jazz, Brad Leithauserâs robust felicity is a balm in grim times. Itâs also the perfect vehicle for nostalgia, regret, and surprise, forces that animate his first collection in more than a decade. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and deeply thoughtful, this collection balances wisdom and practicality, as with deft care Leithauser easily, often unexpectedly, juggles off-rhymes and old forms and new.
The book unfolds like a five-act play, moving from chattier poems to dramatic denouements. In the collectionâs two âDarkerâ sections, we meet folks learning to say goodbye, from a three-year-oldâs cry âI love you so loudâ (âA Young Farewellâ) to a reckoning with words formed âForty-Five Years On.â Time presses in continually. In âAbroadâ and âAt Home,â the author shows us himself, in younger form: sixty-six, then twenty-seven, catapulted back in memory to Tokyo by a single bite of food (âThe Old Currentâ). Then, eight, and awed to remember the beauty of a lone jet overhead. With Updikean wordplay he recalls: âPorch steps, sunset; a warm, gathering gloom. / Behind me, five lives: two parents plus the three / Brothers with whom I share my roomâ (âA Single Flightâ).
As Leithauser takes the measure of a world expanding behind him, he manages to become weightless, freer, wild again. He also refuses to give up second chances. In the âLighterâ interlude, we chance upon âIcarus and His Kid Brother.â Weâre treated to dactyls and lively quatrains, a sloppy kiss thatâs not quite bliss, musings on sobriety, and what comes to pass when âlife turns lickerish and liquoryâ (âDouble Dactyls,â âSix Quatrains,â âThe Muses,â and âKisses After Novocaineâ). The energies yoked within Leithauserâs formalism overflow formality.
Often elegiac and yet packed with humor, contemplative, consoling, and informed by the soul of a storyteller, Brad Leithauserâs latest book of poetry is a warming, enrapturing read that returns us to the ebbs and flows of lifeâs shores. âIâm sixty-six,â the author writes, âand could anything / Reliably be more heartening / Than stray hints that lifeâs brightest events. / Are, however far-flung, strung / Along a long old current?â
Um höfundinn
Poet, novelist, essayist, BRAD LEITHAUSER is the author of eighteen previous books, most recently Rhymeâs Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry. He is a former theater critic for Time, and the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005, he was inducted into the Order of the Falcon by the president of Iceland. A former professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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