Thomas Lux Books

God Particles by Thomas Lux is his eleventh book of poetry. His verses contain rather striking and unusual images that disturb or amuse at first and then coalesce into feelings more lasting than the initial reaction. Look at some of the titles in this collection: "Hitler's slippers," "Sleep ambulance," "Stink eye," "Gravy boat goes over the waterfall," "Jesus' baby teeth," "Apology to my neighbors for beheading their duck," "The deathwatch beetle," "Sex after funerals," "Toad on golf tee," and the title poem, "God particles."

The words that flow out of these striking titles make us traverse through landscapes that are vivid and well-crafted. The abstract world of poetry is absent from the lines that saunter through (natural) elements that have pleasure for children (and adults): ants, bees, stink eye, "peacocks in twilight", toads and moles. Lux hunts for words and metaphors in realms that most poets would not venture into: "the harmonic scalpel", " the republic of anesthesia", "vinegar on chalk" (all poem titles). His similes are as uncommon as "His thoughts like a deck of cards hit/ by a howitzer. (from "Puzzlehead").

The unmistakable skill of Thomas Lux lies in creating an aftertaste, which is like the coolness felt after water evaporates away. As we discover the tenderness with which he deals with human frailties, we realize that all this satire, wit and imagery is just there to make us stop and listen. As we scrape off the last words of a poem, we sense how subtly Lux commanded compassion, tolerance, morality and honesty to float into our hearts and minds. He propels us into his poems as if we were to watch the gladiators fight to death. After the initial thrill of watching the struggle is gone, we are left with an experience or an heartache, maybe sympathy for the loser, admiration for the skill of a fighter and maybe even disgust at the bloodshed, that seemed entertaining only moments back.

Let me take a step back here, and confess that my admiration for Thomas Lux is influenced by my endless regard for him as a teacher and a mentor. In Indian tradition, we believe that every seeker (of knowledge, truth or beauty) needs a Guru to guide his way. For countless students like me at Georgia Institute of Technology, Sarah Lawrence, Warren Wilson and numerous other places, Thomas Lux has provided exactly that mixture of care, knowledge and guidance. For this very reason, I always refer to him as Gurudev (Gurudev means teacher-God, and we refer to Tagore as Gurudev). In the opening poem of this collection, Gurudev Lux writes (poem is dedicated to Peter Davidson): "The gentleman who spoke like music/ was kind to me/ though he did not have to be./ Who brought into the world a thousand books./ (Right there: a life well lived.)" The poem continues: "Who corrected my spelling, gently and/ my history too, who once/ or twice a year/ would buy me lunch/ and later let me leave his office/ with shopping bag of books to read." Our beloved Gurudev has nurtured poetry in seekers precisely like the gentleman in his poem, and this kindness and compassion form an essential backdrop to his writing. The language is simple, yet profound. The word weaving taught and presented in these poems makes them accessible to everyone, which has ever been the hallmark of the work by Thomas Lux.

When I first read poems by Thomas Lux (New and Selected Poems), I frowned at the mention of library of skulls, lake of snakes, shooting off a bird at close range and about sex in history. I was in fact perplexed by those weird, `unpoetic' references. I wasn't too excited by reading poems that were lucid, tangible and written as free verse. But when I set the book down, I found myself meditating on the thoughts seeded by his poems, and opening pages to re-read them. The aspects of life that remain somewhat unspoken of in the ritualistic diet of abstract, obscure poems served to us these days, were surprisingly alive in his poems. Now I realize that his poems have a rhythm, a music that is felt when they are read aloud. Working class people, small town people, hunters and army soldiers all unfold their daily worries or joys into his poems. While the idioms are very American, they speak of emotions and aspirations of all human beings. I have found at least two dozen poems that translate really well into Hindi and resonate with Indian themes (e. g. "A Little Tooth").

Typically a poem meanders through similes, metaphors, line breaks and syllables like a river that has a source, a terrain claimed by it, and an ocean of understanding expected from the reader. Most poets thrive on either an intellectualism or erudition associated with academic circles, or they thrive on a hobo lifestyle, where they extract potent lines from a mist or a fog of highly unconventional, unworldly life. Poems by either of these schools of thought are perhaps most apt for reading by their followers. Hence even though a common man, at times, is amazed, confused or startled by these verses, these contain emotions, examples and philosophies beyond his realm. The presence of occult, obscure, obscene, Oriental and/ or opiated ramblings does not always amount to original and good art. Great art can be extracted by reinventing or reinterpreting the obvious or the ordinary. To illustrate an idea simply, to present an emotion that resonates with feelings of a the non-literary, 'untrained' majority, to produce a sonnet or a song that is deep in meaning and yet contains everyday thoughts and objects, I believe, requires the greatest scholarship. Even though the poems of Lux revel in absurdity of the modern life, by a clever mix of humor and satire, through understatement and careful attention to craft, they leave the reader with a clear idea and a sense of understanding and joy. For this one reason, he is a poet who will ever be read, and should be read.

The poems of Lux are often full of self-effacing humor. In a poem titled Invective, he says: "I pray your son wish to be a poet." He laughs at himself and at his community by writing: " Vatricide/ i.e. the murder (metaphorical) of poets,/ is not such a bad idea in some cases:/ the case of the poet who put fish poison in her poems/ the case of the poet who put his life,/ every part of it, over/ and over again, in his poems." His satire is telling in "Autobiographophobia", where he conjures an absurd biography for a poet. Judge the poem, and not the poet is somewhat unacceptable to the gossip-mongers that abound in public and in media. The dense poetry and prose that is celebrated by intelligentsia gets satirized in "The General Law of Oblivion", where he says: "Though one cannot deny/ its genius, Mr. Proust's prose/ kills me, it loops me over and out." Poems of Lux have endless lessons from history, served to us as humorous anecdotes on one hand, and as parodies of whimsical present on the other. So in the same collection we found an account of a Greek poet (second only to Homer) as well as a poem about Jesus baby teeth on sale!

At times, his poems seem irreverent: like talking about Jesus baby teeth or "the Buddhists quick-change from bright orange/ to camo robes, pointing their howitzers eastward" or where he says "God's expository writing lacks lucidity/ and he or his scribes often write sloppily" Yet if you put these lines in perspective, read them in the context of the poem or the argument, these very lines display a respect for humanity and the divine, that wants to help us transcend our limited, orthodox or nonsecular thinking. In other words, if there is a flame or two here or there, it is to light or corner. I will leave you with the exemplary first three lines from the title poem, "God Particles":

"God explodes, supernovas, and down upon the whole planet
a tender rain of him falls
on every cow, ladle, leaf, human, ax handle, swing set."

which give way to the following lines at the end:

"...and He wanted each of us,
and all things we touch
and are touched by,
to have a tiny piece of Him,
though we are unqualified
for even the crumb of a crumb."

I own other books by Thomas Lux and this one is by far my favorite. While the quirky sense of humor his fans love is still here, he also reaches a consistent depth with this compliation that--poem by poem--leaves an impression no reader can ignore. (Kind of like Chinese water torture...you're not sure which drop does the person in since each is so simple yet so strong. I mean the simile in a good way, of course.)

This book was a pleasure to read (even my non-poem-friendly husband enjoyed hearing them read aloud) and I respect Lux for taking on such a risky topic as the size of God--therefore seeing us as the particles we truly are. It's sobering. Not all of the poems in the collection are about religion, but they are each weighty for their own purposes.

Lux sucessfully acheived discussing religon in poetry with this book, walking the tightrope between doubt and blind faith. He had his eyes wide open, and I think many readers will say the same once they have finished it.

Full disclosure: I am a student of Tom Lux and I greatly like the man. That said, I'm pleased to report that this book represents a return to form by one of America's finest and most big-hearted poets. Over the years, Lux has written a majority of his poems in an ostensibly accessible style, one that draws the reader in (seduces actually) with sly humor, surprising asides and a gentle manner. Almost each of these poems suffers a turn near its close that turns the lyric towards serious matters or a philosophic reflection that seems inevitable and somehow surprising at the same time. The manner and degree of invention that appeared so fresh and inventive in "Split Horizon", "The Drowned River" and "Half-Promised Land", turned a little coy and self-knowing in recent years, the desire to entertain overwhelming the need to connect. Always, however, the technical arsenal of his writing remained impressive, the perfect line-endings, the never-wasted words, the emphasis on fresh language, the gift for perfect titles.

In "God Particles" Lux tames his recent style with an infusion of surrealism and surreptitious theology. As a result, the poems have a degree of gravitas, a weight and mystery that his many readers have not previously seen, especially if they missed reading "The Blind Swimmer", a 1996 collection of early poems from 1970 to 1975. The poems in "The Blind Swimmer" are typical of their period, fashionably surrealistic, somewhat opaque and not always applied to important issues. Lux has turned sixty and the poems in "God Particles" marry the style of the early poems to the ultimate issues of human existence, love and mortality, social dissonance and war, the existence of God and the nature of the universe. It's a good match. Here is a brief love poem:

Early Blur

occurs, I say to Mary, when we catch the outline
of something and think we know it
and then we fill in the parts we don't see
with hope. I say this
to Mary, Mary of the late slant light of autumn,
Mary by the lake of the wolverines,
Mary by the lake beneath which drowned a wall,
Mary of the first snow, I say to Mary,
I say: I am the river
and you are its blue, burning current.

Other tender moments include his tribute to Peter Davison, the late editor of the Atlantic Monthly ("The Gentleman Who Spoke Like Music") and "Sugar Spoon", a song for his parents. There are poems about literature that say something about memory and our common end ("The General Law of Oblivion"), poems about human cruelty and the hunger of the sword, and lyrics about theology ("God Particles", "The Joy-Bringer"). There are poems that are humorous, silly and heartbreaking, sometimes all at once ("And The Mice Made Marriage All Night"); the range is extremely wide. It's a wonderful book, the kind we expect from a major poet.

Every poet, published and journal-scratching, can learn something from Lux. The funny thing is, I don't think he poses himself to be the epitome of American poetry. This is solid, amazing work. He should be read in the schools. He should be read at the beginning of every hockey game. This book should be owned by you.

Reading this collection one gets a sense of how Lux has changed over the years and how those changes have affected his poetry. His keen sense of focus, his delight in learning something in a poem, the playful titles... all remain, but the polish, the craftmanship gets better and better. Thomas in print, Tom when you meet him and hear him read - you will laugh at his reading, picking up lines you missed yourself... Try starting with his poem "The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently" and see if he does not make you aware of that voice AS YOU READ the very poem about that voice. Son of a milkman, read "The Milkman and his Son" and then one to his unborn daughter (p.113) and then her little girl rhymes in "Criss Cross Apple Sauce"... then pause a moment to consider his own childhood in "Refrigerator,1957"... So, it's all from his own life, you ask - another of those confessional poets of the 90's. Not so, says I - find a complete bio in these pages and you are under the influence... it's from YOUR life, I say - and mine, of course. Chronological? Hardly. Even the poems start with the new and look back. Writing this here on the computer I am losing my thoughts because I am getting caught up in the book sitting beside me... read the book, read a few poems each day, make copies for the uninitiated of the poem he wrote for them. I cannot give it a 10 because Lux would not give it a 10 - where could he go from there?

"Elegy for the Floater" explores the human elements of love, death, and life, with a primary focus on healing from psychological damage inflicted by the sudden suicide of a loved one. Deftly crafted with beautiful imagery throughout, "Elegy for the Floater" is highly recommended to any who have lost a loved one to this terrible occurrence. "Webs": my mother drew spider webs/on any paper with her reacher// my mother on the telephone/drew webs across names in our address book//my mother in her rocker/drew webs on bills and Christmas cards//my mother in my bedroom drew/webs deep in diaries//everywhere in that house I found/ink pencil crayon.

This is a stunning debut from the author. Sad, funny, poignant, in your face, depressing, alarming, all of it. You read the poems and prose in one sitting and you can't put it down until you are finished and at the Coda. Then, you come up for air and realize you are alive and that it feels so good to breathe.Teresa Carson has something to say here and it is moving and eloquent. If you have been affected by suicide or trauma in your life, this collection of poems and prose will spin your head but also help you heal. Highly recommended and worthy of a National Book Award. She is one of a group of new authors that is to be watched in the years ahead as a tour-de-force in the world of published authors.

I extensively used the first edition of this book in my teachings to the medical & postgraduate students. After a life time of being through most of the textbooks of hematology, I thought of it as best of the lot. With that enthusiasm, I might have been the first one to purchase the second edition. Actually, I bought it during the ASH meeting when it was still blank papers inside a model light blue cover! Although I try to persuade myself that it is an excellent extension of that great book, I still need sometime to reach that conclusion. I do not know why I feel that the first edition was stronger in its contents. The best thing about this edition is its accompanying CD. An extremely powerful resource that can be put in the bag and be used anywhere. Most of the figures and tables can be used directly for teaching purposes. In conclusion, I think this book is the bible of hematology that could be a sole resource for people from the professorial hierarchy of the trade to the hematology laboratory technician.

I must confess that I am not a poetry person and in all honesty had not heard of the author. The enthusiasm of one of his fans lead me to search out books by him. The Drowned River was the book I found and never again will I neglect poetry.

You (as well as I) will be impressed with how the author takes ordinary things we see and experience in life and turns them into profound reflections. The ordinary is transformed into the extra-ordinary. His use of words calls us to attention of the familiar and demands that we move beyond the surface of what we see.

Shoveling snow, seedy motels, swingsets, donuts and shoveling snow are the varied themes covered in this volume. What in the world do these common place things have in common? Certainly they can't hold any meaning. Think so? Thomas Lux will put you to the challenge. He is serious, playful, introspective and playful in poking fun at human foilbles. Come along the poetic journey with him in the drowned river.

This is one of my favorite books of poetry. Lux's poems are seemingly simple and sweet upon first reading, but repeated readings reveal the deeper, more cynical, more powerful side of his poems. I especially like "The Milkman," a beautiful poem on the relations between a man and his son.

THE STREET OF CLOCKS is all about aging, and by now the middle-aged author who once had the gift of youth in the palm of his hand is feeling death's nostrils breathing warm patterns of air on the back of his neck, and on even more intimate places. When you think of Sarah Lawrence and you think of "poetry" your mind stumbles on the name of Thomas Lux, for he's been there for so long that some younger students weren't even born when he started his lucrative tenure there. He can be hilarious, as when he describes humans as being the only animal who makes quotes marks with their fingers to indicate sarcasm, "bewilderment and awe." The young, in particular, warm to Lux because he sees the world from their point of view, as an infinitely strange arrangement of pleasures and tribulations, never to be exhausted.

This volume took six years to write, and it shows in the repeated thrusts and mechanical coughs of the verse style. Contrary to previous reviewers, I did not find Lux's language always specific. Sometimes it seemed vague, as though he were trying to describe dreamlike experiences or states of feeling for which language does not suffice. Have you ever read the German poet Stefan George? Sometimes, or so it seems to this reviewer, George was born again in upstate New York or wherever it was and suffered through the typical milkman's son's life until he found Sarah Lawrence the way george found his Maximin. His writing is filled with violence, like "Rommel's Asparagus," the punji-like sticks which ripped the underbellies out of enemy pilots.

All in all, he should stop it with the long hair, that makes him looks like he was part of ABBA.

Tom Lux's new book, Street of Clocks, allows its reader the luxury of a slow stroll down a familiar and comforting path. Its language is concise and uncomplicated, and its subject matter is clever, if not profound. Lux deals with such issues as fatherhood, citizenship, and personal insight without being overbearing or forceful. In fact, it is a delight to take your time wading through these thoughtful poems, like stepping into a cool fountain on a hot summer's day; be sure not to get lost in the shiny glitter that comes from some of the metallic detail of his poems, for it is sometimes blinding. This collection is many years in the making, but well worth the wait. Be sure to include this hardback in your permanent collection.

This won't come as a surprise to those who know Lux's work, but *The Street of Clocks* is very good. This is, of course, also the guy who gave us "Commercial Leech Farming Today" (so much for those who say there's no new subject matter), so it always amazes me how many people don't know his work. But you should, all of you. I don't know anybody else who writes like Lux.

Describing his work, unfortunately, is more difficult than flinging around general superlatives. Often weird subject matter which nonetheless hooks into the same stuff we're all feeling: check. Unexpected vocabulary: check. But those features might be thought to equal only novelty (or at best a quirky vision appreciated only by a few isolated fellow nutcases) if it weren't for all the other stuff.

Other stuff. There's the voice, which you couldn't mistake in a thousand; in a period when an awful lot of poets sound an awful lot alike, Lux's voice is distinctive. (I'm not making this up.) That whole James-Wright-minor-melancholy tone that's so prevalent in folks coming out of workshops is absent in his poems, though it's not hard to see that Wright was an influence some way back. And there's the craft; Lux's line breaks are thought out in a way that too many poets' don't seem to be, and he manages formal verse as handily as free. (I think I'm quoting Lewis Turco when I remark that free verse isn't; and Lux knows it.) And there's the specificity which characterizes all good poets: to quote one of my favorites (from *Half-Promised Land*), "Yes!--it does, it does feel exactly fine/ crawling ashore, emptying the boots of water, and frankly/ here's to the clouds the color of bone,/ here's to the indecipherable path home,/ here's to the worm's sweat in the loam..."

See what I mean? That's sufficiently specific to crack your eardrum, with not an abstraction in the lot; and it is, believe it or not, formal verse (I read a Lux sestina without realizing what it was for at least four stanzas). And it's strange enough to make you laugh, a function which distracts you from noticing it's sufficiently (and simultaneously) poignant and celebratory to hook out your liver, a pang you notice just too late to forestall it. (Speaking of livers, there's a poem in *The Street of Clocks* with a lucky vulture in it. Now you know you can't pass that up.) And you can't imagine anyone else putting it just the way Lux does, but you know just what it means, and it makes you feel, in fact, at home. Right here. Seriously, folks, this stuff is good, and it's accessible, and people who hate poetry often like it anyhow. Buy it early and often.

So many other deserving books should be published with Houghton Mifflin before the drivel of Cradle Place.

Thomas Lux is at it again with another collection of insipid poems. I almost laughed myself to tears over his "invisible sliver of a body mite". I read the other reviews on "The cradle place" and can't decide whether these people are lost in their own egos or simply dull-witted. In either case, someone needs to turn off the proverbial ambassadorial light and shut the door.

This poet must be drowning in his own sorrows and hoping to take the whole world with him. From the tone of the work, he's on a spin to the bottom never to return to normalcy. In truth, it scares me to think there are men out there like this who want to fool you into thinking they don't live with insecurity by showing how tough they are. Instead, they are transparent. It is the one virtue of this work. It reveals a weak character.

I am a big fan of Thomas Lux's work--when his work is sharp, he thrusts you immediately into a new quantum universe which is sometimes familiar, or sometimes not. Either way, it quickly establishes its own rules and explores those rules to some human conclusion. Poems of his like "Wife Hits Moose" or "Baby, Still Crying, Swallowed by A Snake" quickly explore the new territory they have established to finally make some point about faith or hopelessness.

Unfortunately, the poems that I just named are not ones that appear in this particular collection. I am always glad to see a new collection by Lux, for I know that the situations of his poems are going to continually surprise me, whether they are horses who die mid-gallop or mummies about to be ground into powder for other uses. But a few poems in here fail to reach those human conclusions that really mark Lux's best work. At one point, we find the speaker of a poem chastising himself for the kind of historical obsession Lux himself has shown in his poems, but this conclusion is unsatisfying and seems almost the work of a novice, which Lux is not.

A marvellous poem in this collection is "To Help the Monkey Cross the River," which in the end produces a hypothetical choice as wise and as wide as implication as Ginger or MaryAnn?, or Steak or Shrimp? This poem is a fine example of the pure genius of Lux, but these examples are more scant in this book.

I still look forward to the next Lux collection but am not fully satisfied with this particular production.

I bought this book at full price in a chain bookstore because I think Lux should get all the recognition coming to him. His selected poetry is masterful, The Street of Clocks astounding, and there are some damn fine poems in here, but in all I don't think this work snaps-to like they did in other collections. Boatloads of mummies, and even a self-chastisement about his neurotic history probing, but in all he doesn't quite pull off what he did in poems like The Man Into Whose Yard and others. Lux is quite a worker, though, and I will snatch up his next collection with unrelenting ardor.