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Title: The Street of Clocks : Poems by Thomas Lux ISBN: 0-618-25750-0 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 12 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Vultures and livers
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Take Your Time
Comment: 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.
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Title: New and Selected Poems of Thomas Lux : 1975-1995 by Thomas Lux ISBN: 039592488X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 17 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems by Charles Simic ISBN: 0151008426 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright ISBN: 0375415181 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Ark: Poems (Kuhl House Poets) by John Isles ISBN: 087745860X Publisher: University of Iowa Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Afterlife of Objects (Phoenix Poets) by Dan Chiasson ISBN: 0226103781 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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