If you pick up Nick Lantz’s new poetry collection, “How to Dance as the Roof Caves in,” you’ll recognize the “self-help” theme running through the titles. To name a few: “How to Travel Alone,” “How to Forgive a Promise Breaker,” “How to Dance When You Do Not Know How to Dance” and even “How to Appreciate Inorganic Matter.”

When he first started composing poems for this book, he found a website with a bunch of “how-to” articles. Always on the lookout for a new project, Lantz was inspired.

“I was just struck by so many of the titles because they were things as simple as ‘How to Boil Water,’ but then some of them were very specific like ‘How to Choose a Wedding Chapel in Gatlinburg, Tenn.,’ Lantz told Art Beat.

He used the titles as the starting point for many of his poems, but when he got to the end of the writing process, he still had a long list of how-to titles that he wanted to use.

And so he gathered several of the titles together into one poem called “Help,” often juxtaposing their meanings to create a narrative.

Hear Nick Lantz read “Help”



Help

—a found poemHow to Sit at a Computer

How to Smile

How to Reach a Consensus

How to Remove Bloodstains from Clothing

How to Love Learning about Things

How to Tell People You’re Keeping Your Maiden Name

How to Call Bolivia

How to Believe in God

How to Make a Wedding ToastHow to Survive without Cooking

How to Enjoy Arizona All Year Long

How to Treat Dehydration

How to Get Rid of Black Circles under Your Eyes

How to Avoid Marriage and Other Committed Relationships

How to Choose a Wedding Chapel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee

How Not to Always Talk about the Same Things —a found poemHow to Sit at a ComputerHow to SmileHow to Reach a ConsensusHow to Remove Bloodstains from ClothingHow to Love Learning about ThingsHow to Tell People You’re Keeping Your Maiden NameHow to Call BoliviaHow to Believe in GodHow to Make a Wedding ToastHow to Survive without CookingHow to Enjoy Arizona All Year LongHow to Treat DehydrationHow to Get Rid of Black Circles under Your EyesHow to Avoid Marriage and Other Committed RelationshipsHow to Choose a Wedding Chapel in Gatlinburg, TennesseeHow Not to Always Talk about the Same Things How to Ignore People

How to Find Cat Urine with a UV Light

5+ Tips for Boiling Water

How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

How to Control Perfectionism How to Buy Cruelty-Free Makeup

How to Practice Nonviolent Communication

How to Win a Street Fight

How to Stop Being Needy How to Be Popular

How to Be Confident

How to Be Attractive

How to Make a Meal Plan for One How to Be Your Own Valentine

How to Buy Tablecloths for Your Wedding

How to Choose a Pencil

5+ Reasons You’re a Control Freak How to Perform Self-Hypnosis

How to Survive a Freestyle Rap Battle

How to Escape Materialism and Find Happiness

How to Live on Minimum Wage

How to Raise Your Leg up to Your Head

How to Survive Federal Prison

How to Survive a Fall through Ice

How to Call in Sick When You Just Need a Day Off

How to Detect Lies

How to Have a Perfect Marriage How to Do Nothing

How to Buy Nothing

How to Be Thankful

How to Be Busy

How to Relax When Relaxation Techniques Don’t Work

How to Do It Yourself

How to Stop Excuses

How to Recognize a Manipulative or Controlling Relationship

How to Know When You’re Hungry

“There’s an interesting way in which stories or narratives can emerge through implications and juxtapositions.”

Lantz pointed to one sequence in particular: “How to be popular”/”How to confident”/”How to be attractive”/”How to make a meal plan for one.”

“You start to get a sense of a character trying to cheer themselves up or bolster their confidence and then falling back on their meal plan for one.”

Lantz found a kind of character among the titles and the articles. He explained that the very existence of the guides — that someone felt they were necessary — implied a story.

One title he brought up was “How Not to Always Talk about the Same Things.”

“It was very clear that the person who had written it had someone in mind when they wrote it … and that this resentment was sort of spilling over into the how-to guide. Even though it was ostensibly for anyone, it was clearly (the author) venting in a passive aggressive way at this one person who they found really annoying.”

As a poetry teacher, Lantz helps others discover the meaning that he can illuminate in a title or a poem. His experience is that people who don’t know poetry as well are nervous. They expect it to be impenetrable, when really it’s much more “accessible.”

“People expect that the interpretation of a poem is more complex than it really is … they think there is something more to it, that it’s a puzzle that has to be unlocked, some sort of Di Vinci code cryptography where it’s going to explain the nature of the universe once we crack the code of this particular poem.”

But, poetry for Lantz isn’t about the final conclusion. It’s about the discovering.

“I like to say that poems are about giving the reader an experience and interpretation as such isn’t necessary.”

Nick Lantz. “Help,” from How to Dance as the Roof Caves In.” Copyright © 2014 by Nick Lantz. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.