Nails

Over the years, Larry Schug has spit out 111 nail poems. His most recent book,Nails, is the rusty coffee can that holds them. The nails in these poems are staunchly, relentlessly physical-2 penny, 8 penny, horseshoe, railroad spikes, straight or bent, shiny or rusty, discarded or wedded to wood. Because Larry trusts the potency of the material world, the nails remain themselves and still become much more-the bond between father and son, a little girl trying to hold her warring parents together, unemployment lines, old age, people who have been beaten down once too often, redeployed soldiers. There are hammers in these poems, too, most of them brutal and deadly, but as always in Larry’s poems, love holds this shaky world together. Unsettling, funny, angry, tender-there’s a surprise on every page ofNails. -Mara Faulkner, OSB, author of Going Blind: A Memoir