Thomas Lux (1) (1946–2017)

I’ve been exercising my poetry muscles and was excited to see this slender volume of 42 poems -- my first exposure to Thomas Lux.

It’s an accessible collection -- short, readable entries that resonate with layered meaning. In fact, many are narratives and end with surprises that pulled me right back to the first line to reread with new insight. Lux muses on disability and mortality; gives homage to poets, writers, poems and literature; reminisces; vents anger. As collections go, what show more strikes me here is not that I have several whole poems I’d like to post, but that I marked striking passages in a dozen poems.

Lux can delight with a single word --
Penultimatum

-- and provoke thought --
{…}the weight
of the ink (oh, I pray
not the pixels!) on an execution order

-- and get the sense detail just right --
The dust motes of mud at a pond’s bottom,
sluggish river, or swamp. The finest, most ethereal
of muds, rising in soft pinheads
from the density below; the fog of mud, what first
grips your ankle so whisperly, a little warmer
than the water above it, a satiny sock

-- and morph dimensions --
I read it all morning and I read it all night.
The next day all day
and 100 miles into the dark

-- and even rhyme --

{…} If I live a hundred lives,
then I’ll know more truths, maybe, and lies,
to write my memoir, novella-sized.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.) show less

This collection of 55 poems is a mix of recollections from Lux's life; appreciations for objects and people and situations; and things he’s noticed or imagined. Some have narratives that drew me in and through, and Lux continues to delight with sudden illumination -- whether of a fact or a truth -- for example, in these passages snipped from different poems:

... {Lichen} helps stone turn back to soil
so slowly the stone doesn’t notice, ...

-----

Grade schools’ large windows
weren’t built show more to let the sunlight in.
They were large to let the germs out. ...

-----

... I loved to touch my child’s forehead
for fever and the feeling of finding none.

-----

... Praise all scars, which, by definition, reveal
that something, one thing, one
thing minimum, is healed.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.) show less

I was not familiar with the poetry of Thomas Lux before I received this book - I will say that after reading 'Child Made of Sand', I will definitely be looking for more of his works. This collection is all about memories, about looking back with a wiser eye on some of the most trivial yet key moments in a life. His language is quiet as he describes the unfettered emotions and mundane observations of childhood; at the same time, his line breaks are so carefully timed and his images so vividly show more written that even the mundane is beautiful. Lux's narrative is accessible and humorous, and surprising. He is clearly influenced by some of the great poets of the past, and pays tribute to them in his works.

My one clear criticism is that he seems to take himself a bit too seriously, and I thought some of the poems in the collection seemed less a part of the cohesive whole. I give this book 3 stars - I definitely want to read more from Lux, but I doubt this will be my favorite of his collections. show less

Lux writes with humor, beauty, and compelling choice of language. Most of the poems seem to contemplate various facets of nature and their connection to each other and humanity, but there are also poems that have absurd and surrealist bents to them. A few misses here and there, but overall very enjoyable and worthwhile!