In discussions of Brad Leithauser's poetry, ''craft'' often comes up. Leithauser, who is also a novelist and essayist, has been called ''the leading New Formalist poet,'' indicating that he is committed to structure and pattern in his verse. But in an age of total prosodic freedom, even Leithauser's attenuated structures put him on the side of tradition. Yet if ''craftsman'' is applied to Leithauser as a term of praise, it nonetheless implies a kind of censure. When poetry succeeds as art, the meter and rhyme work with the meaning to create a higher unity, so that neither sound nor sense can be altered without changing the essence of the poem.
Technique becomes merely the scaffolding that falls away when the structure is complete.
Likewise with the title poem, which describes a woman's mysterious suicide. Professor E. H. Wade'' will write a letter to the local newspaper identifying her suicide note as a quotation from Ophelia. It's not our bailiwick. This is a quirky anecdote, but has no greater claim on the reader's attention. This is less a metaphor than a conceit, an unlikely comparison that does not illuminate the thing described so much as it draws attention to the poet's imaginative effort.