Lightning that strikes the neighbors’ house, the

Winner of the 2010 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by Robert Pinsky Nick Lantz explores the transformative power of tragic and miraculous experiences, through these poems that illuminate near misses of tragedy and transcendence. His gaze 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 a plea for post-9/11 redemption. Lantz never lets his subjects or his readers off the hook, plunging head first into worlds that are both eccentric and familiar, alarming and hopeful.