Customer Reviews

The Odd Last Thing She Did: Poems

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Brad Leithauser is the worst poet I've read in some time. Although there are many more carelessly self-indulgent poets writing, Leithauser is amazingly self-indulgent in terms of content: his poems have no purpose, not even to delight, and they seem simply smug when they do bother to adopt a tone. Thomas M Disch called Leithauser the prom king of American poetry--apparently because of Leithauser's earlier self-aggrandizing--but that description gives Leithauser the advantage of being interesting, which the poems in this book definitely are not.

When Leithauser's first book of poems, Hundreds of Fireflies, came out, many readers of poetry were delighted. His was a truly remarkable first volume of poems. But with each successive volume of poems, his work gets worse. How boring to read a book of poems you know must have bored the poet himself. He needs a subject matter that he can feel excited about because he is obviously not excited and his poems are all the more dull for it. A fine example of how all the form in the world, no matter how well the poet can command it, will not make bad poems interesting. Save your money and read this one, if interested, at the library.