The street of clocks, poems. (Poetry).LUX A unit of measurement of the intensity of light. It is equal to the illumination of a surface one meter away from a single candle. See candela. , Thomas. The street of clocks, poems. Houghton Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Company is a leading educational publisher in the United States. The company's headquarters is located in Boston's Back Bay. It publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers . 51p. c2001. 0-618-25750-0. $13.00. SA Thomas Lux is one of the most innovative and noteworthy voices in American poetry today, an author whose work is never at risk of being stereotypical or conventional. Even his titles, which often serve as the first lines of poems, are uniquely intriguing: "A Bird, Whose Wingtips Were on Fire," and "Unlike, for Example, the Sound / of a Riptooth Saw." Lux is daring in language: over 25 percent of the poem "Bonehead" consists of that same word, and he is precise, vivid, even startling star·tle v. star·tled, star·tling, star·tles v.tr. 1. To cause to make a quick involuntary movement or start. 2. To alarm, frighten, or surprise suddenly. See Synonyms at frighten. in his descriptions. "But if a ball crossed his line, I as one did in 1956 I and another in 1958, f it came back coleslaw cole·slaw also cole slaw n. A salad of finely shredded raw cabbage and sometimes shredded carrots, dressed with mayonnaise or a vinaigrette. ..." Yet it is his effective understatement, his unusual juxtaposition of the apparently outrageous or absurd with the contemporarily relevant, that distinguishes his work, For example, his poem "Plague Victims Catapulted I Over Walls Into Besieged be·siege tr.v. be·sieged, be·sieg·ing, be·sieg·es 1. To surround with hostile forces. 2. To crowd around; hem in. 3. City," starts with the lines "Early germ I warfare Combined with his calm, factual approach to the unlikely, irony is one of his strengths. "Look: there goes I Larry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall..." The Street of Clocks is another in a long line of publications by one of the truly imaginative and daring poets of our era, a risk taker tak·er n. One that takes or takes up something, such as a wager or purchase: There were no takers on the bets. taker Noun always working skillfully at the border of chaos. It serves as a reaffirmation that the work of Thomas Lux is fearless and individual, anything but predictable. James Beschta, Barre, MA |
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