I reviewed the latest book of poetry by Thomas Lux for the paper this week. He’s giving a reading of his work at the Ashley Hall School for Girls on Monday. Here’s a snippet of what I wrote about his new volume called God Particles:
God Particles … is replete with iron words — language hardened by hammer and tong, images smoldering with bitterness and irony, a worldview grown misanthropic by the disappointments of human folly. You can almost hear the late George Carlin — echoes of his memorable faux-political campaign slogan, “Fuck hope” — doling a dollop of subliminal acid.
Or so you think.
Like Carlin, Lux is something of a court jester. Much of God Particles feels like a confidence game, a divine sketch comedy, characterized by machismo, bluster, and a subtle, swaggering charm that leads you to believe one thing only to divert your attention away from what’s really going on.
But what that is is hard to tell sometimes. A haunting aspect of this brilliant collection is its ambiguity of humor. Is Lux winking or just smiling when he fights?
I caught up with Lux in San Diego where he was writing about an alternative circus company for an alt weekly in that city much like City Paper. We talked about his use of satire, his journalism, and that poem about slugging a toad with a golf club.
To hear a podcast of this interview, click here: here
