Cats of the Temple

Few recent debuts in poetry have been greeted with the enthusiasm and acclaim accorded to Leithauser's Hundreds of Fireflies. His buoyant charm and ease of delivery won him a legion of admirers and a reputation as a Wunderkind. In this second volume of his verse, greater maturity and confidence are in evidence, but the mood is still light and playful. Leithauser relies very much on his eye and sense of humor, and is a wizard of description. Nothing is too trivial to be noticedthe encounter of a toad and a damselfly, for example, or an ostrich in the Kyoto Zoo being offered a pretzel by a frightened child. Leithauser trusts the world to reveal its own meaning and is modest about the extraordinary refractory powers of his own painterly mind. January