About Miller's Club Icarus

With muscular language and visceral imagery, Club Icarus bears witness to the pain, the fear, and the flimsy mortality that births our humanity as well as the hope, humor, love, and joy that completes it. This book will appeal to sons and fathers, to parents and children, to those tired of poetry that makes no sense, to those who think lyric poetry is dead, to those who think the narrative poem is stale, to those who think that poetry has sealed itself off from the living world, and to those who appreciate the vernacular as the language of living and the act of living as something worth putting into language.

“A down-to-earth intelligence and an acute alertness to the gritty movement of language are what you’ll treasure most in Matt Miller’s Club Icarus. If you love sentences that fiercely sing the full measure of human tides—from joy to grief—you just might pass this book on to a friend or relative who needs it, or even better yet, purchase their own copy.” —Major Jackson, author of Holding Company and judge

The Beauty of a Nail

hangs on it being
unseen as when
it suspends a
painting or some
caught on camera
moment on a plain wall
or the way within
the wall it holds up
the house, the pipes,
the unrolled
insulation or even
when somewhat seen
as when it holds a man
up to martyrdom—
always it is the tool,
not the meaning.