Distributed for CavanKerry Press
Rung by Rung
This debut poetry collection ponders class and labor, father-son relationships, and the natural world through both conversational and exploratory lyricism.
The poems in Rung by Rung delve into the labor and ecology of Western Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh, centering both built and wild environments. Whether toiling under a broken-down car or soaring into the imaginary, this collection is a rare blend of lyrical and conversational, formal and free, funny and serious, high and low, of decay and growth. Rung by Rung takes its readers foraging and fishing, into abandoned malls and run-down hockey rinks, and interrogates masculinity and family drama from a working-class perspective with delicacy and precision. This powerful debut announces Mike Good as a compelling new voice in American poetry.
Table of Contents
1
Oil Change | 3
Everyone Is Doing Their Best | 5
C.W.P. | 6
Heavy Fertilization | 9
Sweat, Nails, My Father’s Ladder | 10
Rung by Rung | 11
Combined Sewer Overflow | 12
Fishing All Evening at Raccoon Creek Park After the Rain | 14
Changing the Rear Brakes, I Watch My Death Approach | 15
2
The Weight | 19
Six Morels Growing Under a Guardrail | 20
Fishing All Afternoon at Canonsburg Lake, and It Is Hot | 22
Obstructive Sleep Apnea | 23
D++ Dek Hockey League Champions (2012) | 24
Dental Anthropology | 26
The Things I Did in Daleville | 29
Steel and Glass in Margaritaville | 30
Field Guide to Sycamore Island, Blawnox, PA | 31
The Hour of the Cockerel | 33
Glaciation | 34
Eight Morels Growing from a Heap of Gravel | 35
The Robins | 36
3
The Current | 39
4
Bargain Matinee | 57
Shooting Sparrows | 58
After Althea Drive | 60
Unenlightenment | 62
Bright Blue Muscle Car | 63
After the Fight, Having Married Late | 64
Poem for My Niece on the Day She Was Born | 65
Comeback Story | 66
There is a certain quiet in Maine . . . | 68
A Plume | 69
Apple of Gold | 73
Fishing All Morning at Montour Run, Freezing | 74
Notes | 77
Acknowledgments | 79
Gratitude | 81