The Mail from Anywhere

Leithauser gauges nature's elemental force as he contemplates a glacier's relentless push or the coiled potency of intertwined pythons asleep on a cage's floor. The title poem of this witty, deeply felt collection is a hymn on our tenuous foothold in the cosmos. A footloose citizen of the world, almost at home in Rome or Bangkok, novelist-poet Leithauser ( Hundreds of Fireflies ) offers us Japanese landscapes, postcards from Reykjavik, soul-baring patter, word-paintings, snapshots from a family album. Peering into a candle's flame or diving to the ocean bottom, he retrieves unexpected images. He spins an ode to his not-yet-born daughter; a wedding calls forth a sad, lovely lament to aging. This third verse collection reveals a poet of substance grappling with love, loss and separation. BOMC and QPB alternates. (Sept.)