The Old Current: Poems
Brad Leithauser
ααΈααΆ 2025 Β· Penguin Random House Audio Β· ααα·ααΆαααα Brad Leithauser
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MacArthur Fellowshipβwinning poet Brad Leithauser returns with his first new collection in more than a decade, a collection that recalls the delicacy and intimacy of his early, award-winning volumes, and embraces the wisdom of age.
As snappy as a dinner jacketβs red silk lining, as appealing as a piano interlude in jazz, Brad Leithauserβs robust felicity is a balm in grim times. Itβs also the perfect vehicle for nostalgia, regret, and surprise, forces that animate his first collection in more than a decade. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and deeply thoughtful, this collection balances wisdom and practicality, as with deft care Leithauser easily, often unexpectedly, juggles off-rhymes and old forms and new.
The book unfolds like a five-act play, moving from chattier poems to dramatic denouements. In the collectionβs two βDarkerβ sections, we meet folks learning to say goodbye, from a three-year-oldβs cry βI love you so loudβ (βA Young Farewellβ) to a reckoning with words formed βForty-Five Years On.β Time presses in continually. In βAbroadβ and βAt Home,β the author shows us himself, in younger form: sixty-six, then twenty-seven, catapulted back in memory to Tokyo by a single bite of food (βThe Old Currentβ). Then, eight, and awed to remember the beauty of a lone jet overhead. With Updikean wordplay he recalls: βPorch steps, sunset; a warm, gathering gloom. / Behind me, five lives: two parents plus the three / Brothers with whom I share my roomβ (βA Single Flightβ).
As Leithauser takes the measure of a world expanding behind him, he manages to become weightless, freer, wild again. He also refuses to give up second chances. In the βLighterβ interlude, we chance upon βIcarus and His Kid Brother.β Weβre treated to dactyls and lively quatrains, a sloppy kiss thatβs not quite bliss, musings on sobriety, and what comes to pass when βlife turns lickerish and liquoryβ (βDouble Dactyls,β βSix Quatrains,β βThe Muses,β and βKisses After Novocaineβ). The energies yoked within Leithauserβs formalism overflow formality.
Often elegiac and yet packed with humor, contemplative, consoling, and informed by the soul of a storyteller, Brad Leithauserβs latest book of poetry is a warming, enrapturing read that returns us to the ebbs and flows of lifeβs shores. βIβm sixty-six,β the author writes, βand could anything / Reliably be more heartening / Than stray hints that lifeβs brightest events. / Are, however far-flung, strung / Along a long old current?β
As snappy as a dinner jacketβs red silk lining, as appealing as a piano interlude in jazz, Brad Leithauserβs robust felicity is a balm in grim times. Itβs also the perfect vehicle for nostalgia, regret, and surprise, forces that animate his first collection in more than a decade. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and deeply thoughtful, this collection balances wisdom and practicality, as with deft care Leithauser easily, often unexpectedly, juggles off-rhymes and old forms and new.
The book unfolds like a five-act play, moving from chattier poems to dramatic denouements. In the collectionβs two βDarkerβ sections, we meet folks learning to say goodbye, from a three-year-oldβs cry βI love you so loudβ (βA Young Farewellβ) to a reckoning with words formed βForty-Five Years On.β Time presses in continually. In βAbroadβ and βAt Home,β the author shows us himself, in younger form: sixty-six, then twenty-seven, catapulted back in memory to Tokyo by a single bite of food (βThe Old Currentβ). Then, eight, and awed to remember the beauty of a lone jet overhead. With Updikean wordplay he recalls: βPorch steps, sunset; a warm, gathering gloom. / Behind me, five lives: two parents plus the three / Brothers with whom I share my roomβ (βA Single Flightβ).
As Leithauser takes the measure of a world expanding behind him, he manages to become weightless, freer, wild again. He also refuses to give up second chances. In the βLighterβ interlude, we chance upon βIcarus and His Kid Brother.β Weβre treated to dactyls and lively quatrains, a sloppy kiss thatβs not quite bliss, musings on sobriety, and what comes to pass when βlife turns lickerish and liquoryβ (βDouble Dactyls,β βSix Quatrains,β βThe Muses,β and βKisses After Novocaineβ). The energies yoked within Leithauserβs formalism overflow formality.
Often elegiac and yet packed with humor, contemplative, consoling, and informed by the soul of a storyteller, Brad Leithauserβs latest book of poetry is a warming, enrapturing read that returns us to the ebbs and flows of lifeβs shores. βIβm sixty-six,β the author writes, βand could anything / Reliably be more heartening / Than stray hints that lifeβs brightest events. / Are, however far-flung, strung / Along a long old current?β
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Poet, novelist, essayist, BRAD LEITHAUSER is the author of eighteen previous books, most recently Rhymeβs Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry. He is a former theater critic for Time, and the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005, he was inducted into the Order of the Falcon by the president of Iceland. A former professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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