EGGTOOTH

Nathan’s debut collection of poems celebrates farm life.

This book of poems follows a boy’s upbringing that is deeply rooted in the rhythms and ecology of an agrarian existence in rural Kansas. The title object is the sharp structure at the tip of a baby bird’s beak that helps it to hatch. So, too, does Nathan emerge from a childhood on his family’s farm to embark on his journey toward adulthood. The book opens with a cat hiding in the summer heat. “How We Played” recalls boyhood fun across four seasons. Home is a place of wheat fields and well water, where little boys get stuck in the foot with locust tree spikes. The poet’s mother, a teacher as well as a farmer, is an avid gardener who teaches her son that eating “one’s fortunes raw” is a treat. The speaker recalls annually setting up a tent to sell produce, taking the role of cashier. He turns malicious in “Scouts” as he describes an act of hazing against another boy. In “Shock,” the family must deal with the aftermath of a suspected lightning strike to their home during a storm. The poet contemplates the ways silence on the farm can either comfort or torment, depending on one’s mood. The speaker and a female friend, now adults, get their first tattoos: he gets a barn-swallow on the shoulder; she chooses spiral on her ankle. “Love and Ink” explores sexuality: “she’ll tickle your feet / and you’ll lick beneath her ear — / your legs jello, your penis a flower.” The book concludes with the speaker now relocated, calling his parents and receiving updates on the farm in “This Long Distance,” a poem steeped in bittersweet homesickness.

Nathan is a masterful poet—his language is vivid and alive. A cat is “puddled under the boxwood,” a breeze is “quick-footed,” and asparagus “toppled against her knife.” He conjures stinging nettles that “electrify my shins.” His economy of language allows readers to meet multiple characters in a mere four lines: “Auntie, who pronounces it / play-zure as she communes with Sue the drama coach, / and Uncle, who keeps fake owls in his garden, who quizzes / Tom the sheriff (who’s ticklish)” (“Footwashers”). In “If You Draw Rightly on a Wound, It Might Righten,” a stunning description of a first tattoo reads: “ink as blue as bruises may be a kind of trust / sealed and believed.” The speaker sagely concludes, “Maybe certain / pain is meditative.” Each poem paints a striking portrait of rural America. In “Between States,” the speaker walks along a creek in springtime, describing the month of April as “terse breezes, wide-awake-skies, vein-blue tulips” and recalls “Summer as wide as this wildered sky” (“Straw Refrain”). In the poem “In a Churchyard After Dark, with Ruth,” even the gruesome death of a farm boy is made beautiful when rendered by Nathan’s pen: “yanked into a baler, / flew out ribbons.” Though he rhymes frequently, it isn’t in the cloying fashion of a novice poet. And while he provides specific information about his surroundings, from types of flora and fauna to farming practices, the text never reads like an instruction manual—it’s a love letter. A few minor quibbles: There is a recurring character named Justin whose relationship to the author is unclear, and the foreword, by Robert Hass, is so effusive it veers on promotional.

An outstanding book of pastoral poetry from an impressive new voice.