The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House was, in a previous life and under a different title and containing many different poems, Nick’s MFA thesis.
As its title suggests, The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House explores the near misses of tragedy and transcendence, seeking to discover how we are changed by our brushes with miracle and disaster. Lantz’s focus is both roving and microscopic—the Challenger explosion, Bigfoot, a love letter written from inside a missile silo, a mother naming and re-naming a family’s short-lived pets, and even a plea for post-9/11 redemption all come under his scrutiny as he plunges the reader into worlds that are both eccentric and familiar, both alarming and hopeful.
Read reviews of the book.
Want to review the book? Contact the UW Press publicity manager.
Praise for The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House
These are poems about the real America: we’re not talking about rhubarb pies and picket fences, but of the beheaded plastic lambs at Noah’s Funland and the LSD-spiked punchbowl at the prom. Blending pop culture with history, dark humor with philosophy, and lyric intensity with a confident narrative voice, The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House adds up to be far greater than the sum of its parts. The end result is a wise, intelligent book that lingers long after being read, and which further proves that Nick Lantz—despite the lethal irony of his work—is a poet to be believed in.
—Kevin González, author of Cultural Studies
Where Can I Buy This Book, You Ask?
from the publisher, UW Press
from an independent bookseller, like Boswell Books
from Amazon.com
You can also support your local economy by locating a brick-and-mortar store near you and ordering the book through them!
Sample Poems
Portmanterrorism (read by Garrison Keillor!)
More praise for The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House
Nick Lantz’s impressive poems are remarkable for their range and the variety of ways they maneuver down the page. There are arrow-like and probing narratives along with instances of witty word-play, and many which move on a broad front in a wave-like motion that mixes the contemporary with the ancient in a kind of surrealism unique to Lantz’s sensibility. Throughout this collection the language is sure-footed and resonant with multiple meanings, not the least of which is a keen awareness of the harsh dilemmas our time compels us to face. This is one of the finest books I’ve read in years.
—Vern Rutsala, author of How We Spent Our Time
Lantz is a poet of many talents, but perhaps his greatest gift is juxtaposition; he sets beside each other ideas compelling in themselves but apparently unrelated—Jacob and Leah, cow bones buried in a back yard, Sasquatch, and a brother disappearing into addiction in one poem; a refugee, giant squid, and the fact that “waking in bed at night, our own bodies often startle us” in another—and we listen, amazed, as in poem after poem these notations we would have thought dissonant in fact harmonize, and then crescendo. That I can’t figure out how he does it just heightens the thrill.
—Joel Brouwer, author of And So
