 |
| Thomas Lux |
To The Left Of Time
Poems
by Thomas Lux
Mariner Books
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Boston, New York
Copyright © 2016 by
Thomas Lux
75 pages, softbound,
$16.95
Review by Zvi A. Sesling
Cow Chases Boys
What we were thinking
was bombing the cows with
dirtballs
from the top of the sandbank,
at the bottom of which ran a
cave-cold
brook, spring-born
We knew the cows would pass
below
to drink, and we’d pried
our clumps of dirt
from a crumbling ledge. Here,
August last a million years.
There was no we,
I can tell you that now.
I did this alone. At one cow
I knew as old and
cloudy-eyed,
I threw the dirtballs as if
it were a sport
at which I was skilled.
Boom,
a puff of dust off her hip, boom,
boom: drilled
her ribs, and neck, and one
more
too close to where she made
her milk.
She swung around and chased
me up an apple tree.
Her rage surprised me, and
her alacrity.
She looked up. I looked down
at her.
As such with many things, I
did this alone.
We both knew we’d soon be
called home.
So opens Thomas Lux’s
newest poetry volume To The Left Of Time
which is being released this April. Lux is the author of thirteen
books of poems, and perhaps rates in a class of his own as a unique,
entertaining and slyly serious and satiric poet. Many of his poems
leave you feeling you have been had, wondering if what you read is either real
or not.
Take the above poem, in
the tenth line of this twenty-two line poem Lux writes, “There was
no we, I can tell you that now.” It is now his solo trip, the poem
about him – and a cow. Then he tells us the cow chased him up an
apple tree. Did this really happen or is it a take off on George
Washington and the cherry tree a myth created by Mason Locke Weems in
1799? In Lux’s version he does not have a hatchet nor does he
answer to his father, but rather an old cow whose age may
be a metaphor for a father. However, the poem ends with Lux offering his own confession: “I did this alone.” And then it is finally left for the reader to decide if there will be retribution for
his act, “We both knew we’d soon be called home.”
In the press blurb that came
with the book the publisher states Lux’s poems are
semi-autobiographical. The “semi” must mean that somewhere in
the poem is a modicum of truth, like a reality TV show there might be
something real. That is what makes Lux a compelling poet. He
entertains. His humor is on the surface, but his meanings go deeper.
Here is another example
of how Lux brings a reader into his peculiar world. You
wonder about his acts and those of the others, and what parts, if any,
of the poem are real.:
Grade Schools’ Large
Windows
weren’t built to let the
sunlight in.
They were large to let the
germs out.
When polio, which
sounds like the first dactyl
of a jump-rope song, was on
the rage,
you did not swim in public
waters.
The awful thing was an iron
lung.
We lined up in our underwear
to get the shot.
Some kids fainted; we all
were stung.
My cousin Speed sat in a vat
of ice cubes until his
scarlet fever waned,
but from then on his heart
was not the same.
My friend’s
girlfriend was murdered in a hayfield
by two guys from Springfield.
Linda got a bad thing in her
blood.
Three times, I believe, Bobby
shot his mother.
Rat poison took a beloved
local bowler.
A famous singer sent
condolences.
In the large second-floor
corner room
of my fourth-grade class the
windows are open.
Snow in fat, well-fed flakes
floats in. They and the
chalk motes meet.
And the white rat powder,
too, sifts down
into a box of oatmeal
on the shelf below.
There is so much of
the real from the description of reactions to polio to the unreal of a
cousin who sat in a vat of ice cubes and whose “heart was not the
same.” Is Lux writing about the heart’s health or the person
who was not the same kind of person after the battle with scarlet
fever? Is it true or not? Is the murder in the hay field real or not?
Did Bobby really shoot his mother three times? Do teachers open
windows in winter and does “Snow in fat, well-fed flakes float in?”
Or do they drop. And what of the white rat powder that resembles
both the snow and chalk that “sifts down into a box of oatmeal,”
is that at school or home? Who will die from eating it?
In Part II of the book Lux
turns to odes in which some, like the late James Tate, are both
fictional and satirical.
Ode To The Easting
Establishment Where
The Utensils Were
Chained To The Table,
much like the pens at the
post office
or a bank. I’d never had a
reason to enter a bank.
I bought stamps once. I stood
in line
with two dimes
and some pennies,
though no many.
More than a stamp,
I wanted a pencil
so I’d feel like I went to
school.
Those were difficult times.
There were different rules.
Often I dined
at the above establishment.
One was permitted to bring
one’s own spoon.
I didn’t have a spoon but
hoped to soon.
Nevertheless, I ate my belly
full.
I was a young man
and I walk out into the
green corner of morning!”
If you are thinking of
odes like Shelley or Keats, do not bother. Lux is in a class of his
own. And with titles like “Ode While Awaiting Execution,” “Ode
To What I Have Forgotten,” “Ode To The Fire Hydrant” and “Ode
To Pain In The Absence Of An Obvious Cause Of Pain” we know we are
in for some enjoyable and humorous poetry which will spring a few
surprises along the way.
In the final section of
the book there are more poems to delight the reader and which suddenly become
serious as you reach the conclusion. Check out “Attila The Hun
Meets Pope Leo I.” There is humor that is reflective of love and sex as
in “Along The Trail Of Your Vertebral Spine.” Or sadly serious
“For Second Lieutenant J. Wesley Rosenquest” which relates a bit
of western history and whether any of it real or imagined is
something left for us to research.
Lux has always been a
particular favorite of mine, yet peculiar I say because I find him
quirky, full of trivia that make his poems nontrivial, with a satiric
vein like the way a vein of silver shines in a mine. So I find that
reading Thomas Lux’s To The Left Of Time
not only entertains, it educates. Two
great reasons to purchase and read Lux’s latest offering.
__________________________________________
Zvi A. Sesling
Reviewer for Boston
Small Press and Poetry Scene
Author, Fire
Tongue (Cervena Barva Press, 2016)
Author,
Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva
Press, 2011)
Author, King
of the Jungle (Ibbetson Press, 2010)
Publisher, Muddy River Books
Editor, Muddy
River Poetry Review
Editor,
Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8
