A History of Western Music

With camera-liked detailing (“endless swampland, seas of pampas grass, forests of jacaranda”), the poems in Kleinzahler’s expansive latest (after Snow Approaching on the Hudson) draw inspiration and energy from music, musicians, and song. There are “scamps vamping away till last call,” and Whitney Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which cannot be played in the supermarket because “All the girls would be dropping out there like it was sarin gas/ pouring from the speakers up there hidden behind the lights.” Much like the best music, Kleinzahler’s poems are both personal and communal. He offers a rhythmic elegy for poet Thom Gunn—“Over the Great Salt Lake/ Yeah, I thought about you/ But when I pulled down the shade/ Man, I really got blue”—that juxtaposes memories of elation: “The 4 of us would make that little house shake, dancing the night away.” Kleinzahler is a master of the monologue, his speakers bruised, tender, and worldly. At their best, these poems are electric and moving. (Sept.)