The Strange Hours Travelers Keep

August Kleinzahler's new poems stretch and go places he has never gone before: They have his signature high color and rhythmic jump, but they take on a breadth of voice and achieve registers that his earlier work only hinted at. Ranging from Las Vegas and Mayfair to contemporary Berlin, these poems touch down at will in tableaux where Liberace unceremoniously meets with St. Kevin and Gustav Mahler with Ava Gardner. This is the strongest collection to date from a poet "equally at home anywhere between the jets and the steppes" (Alexsandar Hemon, "Poetry").