Most poets have one — maybe two, if they’re lucky. Labels, that is. Hilda Doolittle is known for her precise imagery; Dean Young for effusive humor; Charles Wright is ponderous and always deeply philosophical.
Ask me to pin a label on Nick Lantz, a UW-Madison M.F.A. and author of a recent collection titled You, Beast (University of Wisconsin Press), and I won’t know what to tell you. His fourth full-length collection of poetry and winner of the UW Press’ Brittingham Prize is as poignant as it is mercurial: In it, the current Sam Houston State creative writing instructor rotates through numerous subjects and voices — some human, many animal — including taxidermists, insects, lions and the author himself.
According to Lantz, You, Beast was originally modeled off “Aesop’s Fables,” and the collection includes stripped-down titles: “Mutton,” “Roach,” “Kitchen Floor,” “Balloon Animals,” “Armadillo,” “I-45.”
Don’t be fooled by the simple titles, though: Complexity is at the heart of You, Beast. One of the standout segments occurs in “Randy Johnson Fastball Kills Dove: Spring Training, March 24, 2001.” Lantz transforms the moment, when the Arizona Diamondback pitcher killed a bird with a fastball (often replayed as a flippant sports folly video), into something serious and powerful:
“Or a building, say, / Slow as the origin of species, reaches / to catch something / glittering, / something falling / from the sky // and is erased by fire. // The dove: vaporized.”
The greatest triumph in You, Beast, though, is Lantz’s exacting incorporation of humor. There’s inherent comedy in animals: lions talking, or a goat wearing an astronaut suit on the cover. But Lantz’s humor allows room for meaningful insight.
“What makes a piece of humor productive as the engine of a poem is the pain behind the absurdity,” says Lantz. “Taxidermy: Gift Shop” begins with “Raccoon piloting a canoe,” and continues to describe a series of animals in ridiculous posthumous poses. While relatively short, there’s a sharp turn in its tenor: The final stanza reads “And you, you turn over / the price tag / like a rare leaf.”
Often in the collection, Lantz displays the ability to shut down a reader’s generalizations just as they’re starting to take shape. Just as we’re about to laugh, the camera is turned back upon us — animals, after all — as Lantz provides brief but important moments of clarity.
