Child Made of Sand: Poems
On the evidence of the titles in his twelfth book of poems, such as Like Tiny Baby Jesus, in Velour Pants, Sliding Down Your Throat (a Belgian Euphemism) and Nietzsche Throws His Arms around the Neck of a Dray Horse, Lux is a gentle surrealist. His conceits are quirky. All but two of his poems are in free verse. All are roughly the same length, and they proceed like tall tales or shaggy-dog stories, the line breaks serving as a storyteller’s natural pauses. Tone is the strength and the weakness of the poems. At their best, they laugh at life without diminishing or dismissing its consequences. In Dendrochronologist Blues, for example, the irony of felling an ancient tree to study it deepens when the research team plays poker, using the huge tree rings as chips. The narrator of the poem drolly observes, We let the rain and the stars / interpret the stump. --Michael Autrey