How to Dance as the Roof Caves In: Poems
With the arrival of his third collection, young poet Lantz has made a fast start, collecting the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, the Larry Levis Reading Prize, and the Felix Pollak Prize. “I was born a pushpin in a box / of paperclips, a pointing finger / in a land of bent knees” could be the motto of this volume. Lantz privileges image-making over phrase-making, sight over sound. The long central poem shows another strength: his conceits. “How to Stage a Community” imagines what could very well be true: an unoccupied  development filled with actors pretending to be residents, “staging” on a grand scale, moving among the houses, watering and mowing lawns. This and other poems remind us that all politics are local, and even in a make-believe locality our contemporary concerns can be mercilessly satirized. Lantz’s lyrics are by turns blunt and delicate, confrontational and full of lamentation. --Michael Autrey