The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early Poems, 1970-1975 (Paperback)

by Thomas Lux (Author) "Don't worry about my tongue being a biscuit of dust..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
This selection features Lux's origins, sampling his first two collections and offering six uncollected poems from the same period. These poems possess the colloquial tone of Split Horizon (LJ 8/94) but fail to exhibit the same control over language, rhythm, and imagery. Many of the images are underdeveloped, e.g., "Somewhere in the forest he yawns/ in a deep pit." The imagery is left unaddressed as the poems move from one image to another, creating random leaps and jumps. Another weakness is Lux's confusion of ambiguity for mystery: "something ungathered,/ sleep after sleep,/ for you, the last cough.../ I'm certain?sleep after sleep." Additionally, many of the poems end artificially with non sequiturs. Lux could have strengthened this collection by including work from more recent volumes. Recommended for large poetry collections.?Tim Gavin, The Episcopal Acad., Merion, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Tina Barr, Harvard Review
This selection of poems...makes available a valuable addition to the Lux canon. The Characteristics of Lux's style are evident: the juxtapositions of the comic and the profound, the originality of an inventive voice that continues to probe exactly where it hurts, the fascination with the macabre--in short, a wit both antic and dark. (Tina Barr, Harvard Review, Spring 1997)

BACKCOVER: Praise for the poetry of Thomas Lux: "Thomas Lux's Memory's Handgrenade is outstanding among the first books I have read. He has control, he throws his grenades with deadly accuracy and an almost perfect sense of timing. The poems explode into the reader's brain, permanently embedded.--Cynthia Macdonald, Parnassus: Poetry in Review. "His voice is characterized by that mixture of colloquial and lyrical whose music and spatial relations are those of a born talker...Lux...seems incapable of writing a bad line and has written some beautiful ones."--Helen Chasin,The Village Voice.

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• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Adastra Press (December 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0938566733
• ISBN-13: 978-0938566731
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,995,524 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
  
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