Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth

Poems

Kathy Mac

“Poets with Kathy Mac’s impeccable technical skill are not too hard to find, but very few can touch her for emotional power, thematic range, gentle humour or quiet courage. As Robert Heinlein said of another writer, these poems should be served with a whisk broom, so that the customer may brush the sawdust off himself when he gets back up.” —Spider Robinson, author of Telempath (1976), The Free Lunch (2001) and many others in between

On Mac’s 1991 chapbook, Dust From Outer Space: “Mac’s poetry is incisive, witty, and thought-provoking.” —Saint Mary’s Journal

On Mac’s 1995 hypertext, Unnatural Habitats: “a rare disquieting beauty… The images come from the newspapers, television, or books, but are interiorized and made part of the narrator, whose voice is dry and evocative, an impossible combination that Kathy Mac achieves with apparent lightness… a pessimistic beautiful report from the front of what it means to be human.” —Susan Pajares Tosca, Hipertilia

Contents

• Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth
• Substitutions, Mark I, II, and III
• Tooke, Suitor to the Spectacular Givens
• Life Cycle of a Romance (Reader’s Digest Version)
• AEolian Chrysanthemums
• Serv. Frags
• Hand Movements
• Acknowledgements

About the Author

Kathy Mac teaches at Saint Thomas University and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in 2002 for Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth.

When Kathy Mac, ronin romantic and Hundefräulein Emeritus, is spotted striding across the barrens around Sambro Head, Nova Scotia, she is generally trying to keep a variable number of dogs in sight while musing on the twisted paths that led a confirmed cat afficionado into such constant caninity.