The Oldest Word for Dawn: New and Selected Poems

From one of our most universally admired poets: a generous selection from his five acclaimed books of poetry, and an outstanding group of new poems.
From the outset, Brad Leithauser has displayed a venturesome taste for quirky patterns, innovative designs sprung loose from traditional forms. In "The Oldest Word for Dawn, "we encounter a sonnet in one-syllable lines ( Post-Coitum Tristesse ), a clanging rhyme-mad tribute to the music of Tin Pan Alley ( A Good List ), intricate buried rhyme schemes ( In Minako Wada s House ), autobiography spun through parodies of Frost and Keats and Omar Khayyam ( Two Summer Jobs ).
In a new poem, Earlier, the poet investigates a kind of paradox: What is the oldest word for "dawn "in any language? The pursuit ultimately descends into the roots of speech, the genesis of art. Earlier is part of a sequence devoted to prehistoric themes: the cave paintings of Altamira, the disappearance of the Neanderthals, the poet s journey with his teenage daughter to excavate a triceratops skeleton in Montana . . .
The author of six novels as well, Leithauser not surprisingly brings to his verse a flair for compelling narrative: a fateful romantic encounter on a streetcar ( 1944: Purple Heart ); the mesmerizing arrival of television in a quiet Detroit neighborhood ( Not Lunar Exactly ); two boys heedlessly, joyfully bidding permanent farewell to a beloved sister ( Emigrant s Story ).
" The Oldest Word for Dawn" reveals Brad Leithauser as a poet of surpassing tenderness and exactitude, a poet whose work, at sixty, fulfills the promise noted by James Merrill on the publication of his first book: The observations glisten, the feelings ring true. These poems by a young, unostentatious craftsman are made to something very like perfection. No one should overlook them.
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