Synopses & Reviews
The Cradle Place is the new collection from Thomas Lux, a self-described "recovering surrealist" and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award.
These fifty-two poems bring to full life the "refreshing iconoclasms" Rita Dove so admired in Lux's earlier work. His voice is plainspoken but moody, humorous and edgy, and ever surprising.
These are philosophical poems that ask questions about language and intention, about the sometimes untidy connections between the human and natural worlds. In the poem "Terminal Lake," Lux undermines notions of benign nature, finding dark currents beneath the surface: "it's a huge black coin, / it's as if the real lake is drained / and this lake is the drain: gaping, language- / less, suck- and sinkhole." In the ominous "Render, Render," the narrator asks us to consider a concentration of the essences of our lives: all that is physical, spiritual, remembered, and dreamed for, melded together to make the messy self we present to the world.
Lux's voice is intelligent without being bookish, urgent and unrelentingly evocative. He has long been a strong advocate for the relevance of poetry in American culture. The Los Angeles Times praises Lux for his "compelling rhythms, his biting irony, and his steady devotion to a craft that often seems thankless." As Sven Birkerts noted, "Lux may be one of the poets on whom the future of the genre depends."
Synopsis
"[Lux is] sui generis, his own kind of poet, unlike any of the fashions of his time." Stanley Kunitz
Thomas Lux is humorous, edgy, and ever surprising in The Cradle Place, his tenth collection of verse. These fifty-two poems question language and intention and the sometimes untidy connections between the human and natural worlds. Lux has long been an outspoken advocate for the relevance of poetry in American culture, and his voice is urgent and unrelentingly evocative. As Sven Birkerts has noted, Lux may be one of the poets on whom the future of the genre depends.”
A book full of arresting images . . . The natural world, as it appears here, is at first lovely . . . but turns out dangerously vanquished . . . Not since Plath has hysteria looked this kissable." San Francisco Chronicle
Lux has a gift for the swiftly turned expression . . . Such immediacy and quirkiness will hold a reader." Poetry
"Readers will be mesmerized." Poetry Book of the Year, Library Journal
THOMAS LUX holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry and is director of the McEver Visiting Writers Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been awarded three NEA grants and the Kingsley Tufts Award, and is a former Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in Atlanta.
About the Author
THOMAS LUX holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry and is the director of the McEver Visiting Writers Program at Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been awarded three NEA grants and the Kingsley Tufts Award and is a former Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in Atlanta.
Table of Contents
Contents I The Late Ambassadorial Light 3 Say Youre Breathing 4 Dry Bite 5 Horse Bleeding to Death at Full Gallop 6 Debate Regarding the Permissibility of Eating Mermaids 7 The Professor of Ants 8 Tactile 9 Ten Years Hard Labor on a Guano Island 10 Family Photo Around Xmas Tree 11 Rather 12 Portrait of X [III] 13 Three Vials of Maggots 14 Uncle Dung Beetle 15 The Gletz 16 Can Tie Shoes But Wont 17 The American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association 18 To Help the Monkey Cross the River 19 The Devils Beef Tub 20 Boatloads of Mummies 21 Thus, He Spoke His Quietus 22 The Magna Chamber 23 Birds Nailed to Trees 24 II Guide for the Perpetually Perplexed 27 If One Can Be Seen 28 The Year the Locust Hath Eaten 29 Burned Forests and Horses Bones 30 Letter to Walt Whitman from a Soldier He Nursed in Armory Square Hospital, Washington, D.C., 1866 32 Scorpions Everywhere 33 Myope 34 III To Plow and Plant the Seashore 37 Amphribrach Dance 38 Remora 39 National Impalement Statistics 40 Asafetida 41 174517: Primo Levi, an Elegy 42 Goofer-Dust 43 With Maeterlincks Great Book 44 Terminal Lake 45 The Chief Attendant of the Napkin 46 The Mountains in the River on the Way to the Sea 48 Reject What Confuses You 49 Flies So Thick above the Corpses in the Rubble, the Soldiers Must Use Flamethrowers to Pass Through 50 The Ice Worms Life 51 Provincia Aurifera 52 I Will Please, Said the Placebo 53 Hospitality and Revenge 54 From the High Ground 55 Dystopia 56 Monkey Butter 57 Breakbone Fever 58 Cant Sleep the Clowns Will Eat Me 59 Render, Render 60