Split Horizon [Paperback]

Thomas Lux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 19, 1995

Thomas Lux is the author of such books as Sunday, Half Promised Land, and The Drowned River. His poetry has been fulfilling every expectation by penetrating deeper into the plain-spoken, saturnine, witty language that he virtually invented. In his latest work, Lux's level gaze, cool talk, weird rhythms, and quirky humor place him in a special territory - entirely original - of contemporary American poetry. These new poems, like Split Horizon itself, have unusual titles (Loudmouth Soup, Virgule,Each Startled Touch Returns the Touch Unstartled) and circle around their subjects in strange ways, most often dealing with the lonely oddity of the individual in a society that inflexibly ignores individuality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In "Thrombosis Trombone" Lux ( The Drowned River ) writes, "What goes on inside / the body is a wonder." With Lux, the wonders of the world can be communicated in the jangling noise of his language and in his amazing manipulation of tone to suit his poetry's matter. He is singular among his peers in his ability to convey with a deceptive lightness the paradoxes of human emotion. Lux asks, "Why this, / why that--" about nature and existence while knowing that the answers can be at the same time speculative, serious, funny and true. In this, his sixth book, he writes about a number of things: left-handedness, money, biographies, boats, glow worms, irony. Lux conveys awe as well as compassion when describing the human condition, which is presented in "The People of the Other Village" to be both "brutal" and "beautiful." These are generally short poems; two-thirds are a page long. In "Fundamental," "Job's Problems," and others, Lux stretches the subjects of the poems somewhat, in the latter to enrich a view of spiritual justice, but he seems afraid to challenge the reader with greater length.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Like his last collection, The Drowned River (LJ 2/15/90), Lux's sixth collection thrives on dislocations: school children trapped in their classrooms by a blizzard, a boat found in the middle of a forest, a Nazi taking tickets at a puppet show. Less stubbornly surreal than James Tate, less encyclopedic than Albert Goldbarth, Lux nevertheless shares their interest in the comic possibilities inherent in literally interpreted phrases ("Eyes Examined While You Wait") and in the more obscure backwaters of history ("Emily's Mom"). Wearing irreverence like a uniform, Lux skewers received literary symbols ("Pecked to Death by Swans"), medical science ("The latest research: lefthandedness/is a form of brain damage"), and God ("Fundamental") with equal deadpan-ache. What saves all this from seeming too 1970s-frivolous is Lux's very astute ear, as in describing a storm: "when your house bears/the branches' lash, big winds/lift and slam the clapboards." And it's the nick-of-time humor that rejuvenates and restores perspective in an otherwise overbearing atmosphere of ironic pessimism, just as it should-Lux seems to be telling us-in real life as well.
Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 81 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; First Edition edition (July 19, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395700973
• ISBN-13: 978-0395700976
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,435,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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