{"product_id":"curves-and-angles-isbn-9780375711428","title":"Curves and Angles","description":"\u003cb\u003eBrad Leithauser’s “most satisfying collection in years” \u003ci\u003e(Library Journal)\u003c\/i\u003e, a bracing poetic journey that begins in a warm, peopled world and concludes in a cooler and more private place, embracing love of the human and natural world in all its states.\u003c\/b\u003e“There’s a down-to-earth wisdom in the way Brad Leithauser sees the transcendent in everyday experience: Instead of trying to make it happen, he lets it happen.” —\u003cb\u003eKatie Peterson, \u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Why devote oneself to that aggressively minor genre, poetry, when novels and screenplays and tell-all memoirs get more notice and make more money? Brad Leithauser answers that question in \u003ci\u003eCurves and Angles\u003c\/i\u003e.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eBrad Leithauser \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of five previous books of poetry, five novels, a book of essays, and a novel in verse. After many years of teaching at Mount Holyoke College, he is now a professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He and his wife, the poet Mary Jo Salter, divide their time between Amherst, Massachusetts, and Baltimore, Maryland.NOT LUNAR EXACTLY\u003cbr\u003e(Detroit, 1948)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNew, and entirely new to the neighborhoodÉ\u003cbr\u003eOne August day, it came to their own street:\u003cbr\u003ethe Nutleys brought home a television!\u003cbr\u003eNights now, the neighbors began to meet\u003cbr\u003emore often than before, out walking, \u003cbr\u003ewalking past the Nutleys, who, on display\u003cbr\u003ebehind their picture window, sat frozen\u003cbr\u003ein their chairs, watching their television, which lay\u003cbr\u003e    off to the side, just out of view,\u003cbr\u003e    so you couldn’t make out what\u003cbr\u003e    it was they were watching but only\u003cbr\u003e    them watching, the four Nutleys, in a blue\u003cbr\u003e    glow that was lunar but\u003cbr\u003e    not lunar exactly.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat was the summer we all\u003cbr\u003ewatched the Nutleys–no,\u003cbr\u003ewe all watched “The Nutleys,”\u003cbr\u003ewhich was the one great show\u003cbr\u003eof the summer, it ran for weeks,\u003cbr\u003ewith its four silent stars\u003cbr\u003ebehind glass, until nights went cold\u003cbr\u003eand damp and we turned to our cars\u003cbr\u003e    if we ventured out after dark,\u003cbr\u003e    and then–three in a row–\u003cbr\u003e    the Daleys, the Floods, the Markses\u003cbr\u003e    took the plunge, they brought home the glow,\u003cbr\u003e    and the Nutleys, suddenly,\u003cbr\u003e    belonged to a new community.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFROM HERE TO THERE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are those great winds on a tear\u003cbr\u003eOver the Great Plains,\u003cbr\u003eBending the grasses all the way\u003cbr\u003eDown to the roots\u003cbr\u003eAnd the grasses revealing\u003cbr\u003eA gracefulness in the wind’s fury\u003cbr\u003eYou would not otherwise\u003cbr\u003eHave suspected there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd there’s the wind off the sea\u003cbr\u003eRoiling the thin crowns of the great\u003cbr\u003eDouglas firs on the cragged \u003cbr\u003eOregon coast, uprooting \u003cbr\u003eChoruses of outraged cries, \u003cbr\u003eAs if the trees were unused \u003cbr\u003eTo bending, who can weather\u003cbr\u003eSuch storms for a century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd–somewhere between those places,\u003cbr\u003eNeeding a break–we climb out stiff\u003cbr\u003eFrom our endless drive to stand, dwindled, \u003cbr\u003eOn a ridge, holding hands, \u003cbr\u003eIn what are foothills only because \u003cbr\u003eThe neighboring mountains are \u003cbr\u003eSo much taller, and there are the breezes,\u003cbr\u003eContrarily pulled, awakening our faces.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSON\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMemory buries its own,\u003cbr\u003eAnd of what now forever must be\u003cbr\u003eThe longest day of his life\u003cbr\u003eWhat mostly remained was a blur\u003cbr\u003eUnder too-bright lights–so he\u003cbr\u003eCould scarcely tell if the things\u003cbr\u003eSharpest in his mind were\u003cbr\u003eNothing but fantasies, sewn\u003cbr\u003eAfterwards, out of grief, \u003cbr\u003eAnd guilt’s imaginings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet it seemed memory called up\u003cbr\u003e(After the interminable birth,\u003cbr\u003eAs his finger stroked the arm\u003cbr\u003eOf a child who would not last\u003cbr\u003eEven one whole day\u003cbr\u003eAnd all of its time on earth\u003cbr\u003eMinistered to by vast\u003cbr\u003eMachines that couldn’t mend the harm\u003cbr\u003eIn a single transcription slip\u003cbr\u003eIn reams of DNA)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA look so haunted, so\u003cbr\u003eHaunting, he would not confess\u003cbr\u003e(Not even later, to his wife)\u003cbr\u003eHow it stayed with him, on him: the slow\u003cbr\u003eFlicker in a watery eye,\u003cbr\u003eThe mute call–through all\u003cbr\u003eThe exhausted hopefulness\u003cbr\u003eThe condemned come to know\u003cbr\u003eIn the end–from animal to animal,\u003cbr\u003eImploring, \u003ci\u003ePlease save my life\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNORTH-LOOKING ROOM\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In a seldom-entered attic\u003cbr\u003e   you force a balky door,\u003cbr\u003e   disclosing a room made brilliant\u003cbr\u003eby an orange tree whose branches bear \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    no fruit but maple leaves;\u003cbr\u003eWe’re in New England, after all.\u003cbr\u003e   Though rippling foliage fills \u003cbr\u003ethe pane, the flush that tints the wall\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewill last a week or two, no more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e                         *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And this conception, if consoling, \u003cbr\u003e   of a high, untenanted room\u003cbr\u003e   lit solely by a tree\u003cbr\u003ehouses as well–at least for those\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    who’d sidestep round the fear\u003cbr\u003ethat in the give-and-take of calls\u003cbr\u003e   to answer, calls to make,\u003cbr\u003ewe lose the light most dim, most clear–\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea reprimand no breeze can shake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOVER LABRADOR\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen miles of perfect whiteness\u003cbr\u003eGave way to a whiteness below\u003cbr\u003e(Snowed-under hills of a cloudlike brightness\u003cbr\u003e  Under cloudbanks heaped like snow),\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy either light \u003cbr\u003eHow fulfilling to contemplate\u003cbr\u003eDomains so evenly claimworthy–\u003cbr\u003e  Unpeopled, complete.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default 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