Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0375401415, Hardcover)

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..."

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.