Curves and Angles by Brad LeithauserAlfred A. Knopf, 2006

The pleasing poems in this book are divided into two sections, the “Curves” and “Angles” of the title, with a “Borgesian interlude” between them. The first section is more peopled than the second: as the author’s note explains, the curves “are the body’s curves,” while the angles are the “less giving lines of an inanimate world.” I like Leithauser’s style a whole lot: smart and wordy without being overwritten, parenthetical asides that sometimes take up a whole stanza, rhyme patterns that still read as conversational. The vignettes of “City Album: A Wet Afternoon” capture what’s so satisfying about the city: all the different lives unfolding at once; the haiku in “Cosmogonies” are precise and spare.