Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer: Poems, Paperback/Steve Scafidi

Sometimes a fact swings down like a hammer and we are changed. The fact of loss, the fact of desire, and all the wild, unruly facts of history hammer down and sparks fly up. This, then, is a collection of facts. In a rushing, rolling style, poems sweep to the edge of falling apart, take great delight in defying that dissolution, and come upon a thing redemptive and clarifying: the fact of love. In a world that "doesn't really care / whether we live or die," Steve Scafidi writes, "tell it you do and why." From the unthinkable to the quietly heroic, somehow we have emerged. Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer celebrates that fact most of all. About the Author: Steve Scafidi was born and raised in Virginia and earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing at Arizona State University. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New Virginia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He is a cabinetmaker and lives in Summit Point, West Virginia, with his wife, Kathleen, and daughter, Isabella. This is his first book.