A Library of Skulls [poem 3]

Shelves and stacks and shelves of skulls, a Dewey

Decimal number inked on each unfurrowed forehead.

Here's a skull

who, before he lost his fleshy parts

and lower bones, once

walked beside a river (we're in the poetry section

now) his head full of love

and loneliness; and this smaller skull,

in the sociology stacks, smiling (they're all

smiling)—it's been empty

a hundred years. That slot

across the temple? An ax blow

that fractured

her here. Look at this one from the children's shelves,

a baby, his fontanel

a screaming mouth and this time no teeth, no smile.

Here's a few (history)—a murderer,

and this one—see how close their eye sockets!—a thief,

and here's a rack of torturers' skulls

beneath which a longer row of the tortured,

and look: generals' row,

their epaulets

on the shelves to each side of them.

Shelves and shelves, stacks stacked on top of stacks,

floor above floor,

this towering high-rise library

of skulls, not another bone in the place

and just now the squeak of a wheel

on a cart piled high with skulls

on their way back to shelves

while in the next aisle

a cart filling with those about to be loaned

to the tall, broken-hearted man waiting

at the desk, his library card

face down before him.

                        

                             

Comment:-

Lux’s poem contains rather striking and unusual images that disturb or amuse at first and then coalesce into feelings more lasting than the initial reaction. The words that flow out of these striking titles make us traverse through spaces that are vivid and well-crafted. Lux’s poems always makes the reader decipher a deep side of the poem he wants to express , its startling how he uncovers layers the buried stories and mystery behind mere stack of bones. An untold story behind hundreds of dissipating skulls. He describes a skull of a thoughtful man and a lover, a skull of a crying child, and even that of a murderer. His manner of presenting is metaphorical one and makes the reader visualize vivid images through his flamboyant writing style.

This poem is also an example of the neo-surrealism era discussed in the previous blog, which is reflected by this particular poem. Many of lux’s poem in his notable published works like “The Street of Clocks”  and the latest one being “God Particles” consists of poetries expressing the darker “gothic” side. The unmistakable skill of Thomas Lux lies in creating an aftertaste, which is like the coolness felt after water evaporates away. As we discover the tenderness with which he deals with human frailties, we realize that all this satire, wit and imagery is just there to make us stop and listen. I personally feel lucky enough to read and review the works of such a talented poet and understand the meaning and nuances between the lines, which broadened the horizon of my vision and deciphering the unsaid. It made me more aware of the fact that a poetry can say a lot, without actually saying it that way!

Cucumber fields crossed by high-tension wires [poem 2]

The high-tension spires spike the sky
beneath which boys bend
to pick from prickly vines
the deep-sopped fruit, the rind's green
a green sunk
in green. They part the plants' leaves,
reach into the nest,
and pull out mother, father, fat Uncle Phil.
The smaller yellow-green children stay,
for now the fruit goes
in baskets by the side of the row,
every thirty feet or so. By these bushels
the boys get paid, in cash,
at day's end, this summer
of the last days of the empire
that will become known as
the past, adios, then,
the ragged-edged beautiful blink.

Comment:-

We assume it to be an agrarian scene at first. It is made so dense and surreal by Lux’s painterly descriptions, but there is something subtler, deadlier underneath. This poem for me addresses invading armies, although disguised in fruity metaphor. Overwhelming forces invade homes, destroy homelands, cart off citizens and vital resources, and then are gone when use is exhausted , in a blink. This poem uses metaphorical devices to delineate how the nations and electoral will distance themselves for the real damage their country inflicts for some greater, glorious good. Suffering discounted and blood on one’s finger tips. This is a provocative poem from Lux.

Lux is extremely skilled when it comes to his language. Of all the poets with a realist bent, Lux I think is the one who is truly subversive of his own and, by extension, his reader's assumptions of the world. It is a neat and meaningful leap for him. You smile, indeed, you chuckle, when you get the joke and wonder how on earth he came up with this unexpected yet fruitful turn, and then there is the additional, delayed realization that what Lux has offered up is a brief and cutting critique. Lux’s skills make the reader read the poems numerous times to decipher the message hidden underneath. A highbrowed way of writing, must say.

Refrigerator, 1957 [poem 1]

More like a vault -- you pull the handle out
and on the shelves: not a lot,
and what there is (a boiled potato
in a bag, a chicken carcass
under foil) looking dispirited,
drained, mugged. This is not
a place to go in hope or hunger.
But, just to the right of the middle
of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red,
heart red, sexual red, wet neon red,
shining red in their liquid, exotic,
aloof, slumming
in such company: a jar
of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters
full, fiery globes, like strippers
at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino,
the only foreign word I knew. Not once
did I see these cherries employed: not
in a drink, nor on top
of a glob of ice cream,
or just pop one in your mouth. Not once.
The same jar there through an entire
childhood of dull dinners -- bald meat,
pocked peas and, see above,
boiled potatoes. Maybe
they came over from the old country,
family heirlooms, or were status symbols
bought with a piece of the first paycheck
from a sweatshop,
which beat the pig farm in Bohemia,
handed down from my grandparents
to my parents
to be someday mine,
then my child's?
They were beautiful
and, if I never ate one,
it was because I knew it might be missed
or because I knew it would not be replaced
and because you do not eat
that which rips your heart with joy. 

Comment :-

In this poem, Lux skilfully reflects the history of consumer culture’s love affair with the objects they purchased and the attachment of happiness towards it. Only to fall out of love with the same when it either stops working, the wire is too frayed or when a new sleeker design hits the showroom floors.  In just few lines, we realise that there are so many memories attached to every object around us, be it an old deserted refrigerator on the back porch for years. So much history, family is contained within this refrigerator, memories that grow faint as children grow, parents die, people move to places out of town. Something you pass daily, perhaps, knowing there is history and stories attached to its existence as a working machine, all of it unknown and unrecoverable like singular drops of rain into a stream.

Lux’s use of words is something which makes the reader visualize lucid images.  The colour he described representing the Maraschino cherries, the various comparisons of cherries are the examples of his art in descriptive visualization and writing. The use of modern language in the poetry clearly displays the then changes taking place in the American culture during that particular era. Lux’s craftsmanship in regard to the free verse writing is commendable. 

1960s and 70s- Background in brief

Thomas Lux’s first work Memory’s Hand grenade was published in 1972. The time of 1960s and 1970s brought about drastic changes in the culture, social life and the mind set of Americans. As the level of awareness rose in America, people started to realize their rights and position in the society which brought about the counter-cultural revolution in the 1960s. The rise in social and political moments like the rise of feminism, gay rights moment, the Afro-American moment and the Hispanic moment bought about a noticeable change in the socio-political scenario of America.

The chaotic events of the 60's, including war and social change, seemed destined to continue in the 70's.  Major trends included a growing disillusionment of government, advances in civil rights, increased influence of the women's movement, a heightened concern for the environment, and increased space exploration.  Many of the "radical" ideas of the 60's gained wider acceptance in the new decade, and were mainstreamed into American life and culture.  Amid war, social realignment and presidential impeachment proceedings, American culture flourished.  Indeed, the events of the times were reflected in and became the inspiration for much of the music, literature, entertainment, and even fashion of the decade.  

As people started to become more adaptable to the modern culture, the Neo-surrealist moment began, which was a spin-off of the Surrealist moment of the 1920s. Neo-surrealist moment brought about a huge change in the people’s way of perception. This moment was more about the changing trend of art, music and culture. The initially popularized pop art of the surrealist moment was different for the neo-surrealism. The neo–surrealism was marked by an attempt to illustrate the bizarre imagery of dreams or the subconscious mind in painting and photography. It is a combined imagery of dreams and fantasies or subconscious mind visions in fine art painting, digital art graphic, and photography. The rise in the popularity of Rock genre of music with different styles branching out marks the change in people’s choice. Neo-surrealism can also be related to the “GOTHIC” lifestyle as we call it now.

Thomas Lux began publishing haunted, ironic poems that owed much to the Neo-surrealist movement in the 1970s. As we read the poems and analyse them, we will get a clear picture on the neo-surrealist style reflected by lux’s poems.

A picture depicting neo-surrealism

An Introduction & more...

                       

Thomas Lux was born in 1946 in Northampton, Massachussets to working class parents. He was son of a milkman and a Sears & Roebuck switchboard operator, neither of whom graduated from high school. Lux was raised in Massachusetts on a dairy farm. He was, according to those who knew him in high school, very good at baseball, basketball and golf. Classmates also recall that he had a "terrific sense of humor."Lux attended Emerson College and the University of Iowa.

Acclaimed poet and teacher Thomas Lux began publishing haunted, ironic poems that owed much to the Neo-surrealist movement in the 1970s. Critically lauded from his first book Memory’s Handgrenade (1972), Lux’s poetry has gradually evolved towards a more direct treatment of immediately available, though no less strange, human experience. Often using ironic or sardonic speakers, startlingly apt imagery, careful rhythms, and reaching into history for subject matter, Lux has created a body of work that is at once simple and complex, wildly imaginative and totally relevant. Lux is vocal about the tendency in contemporary poetry to confuse “difficulty” with “originality.” There’s plenty of room for strangeness, mystery, originality, wildness, etc. in poems that also invite the reader into the human and alive center about which the poem circles. Lux’s first collections, including Memory’s Handgrenade and Sunday: Poems (1979), were grounded in the Neo-Surrealist techniques of contemporaries like James Tate and Bill Knott.

Lux’s other collections include New and Selected Poems: 1975-1995 (1997), The Street of Clocks (2001), The Cradle Place (2004) and God Particles (2008), a collection Elizabeth Hoover described as “lucid and morally urgent” . Thomas Lux taught at Sarah Lawrence for over twenty years and is affiliated with the Warren Wilson MFA program; currently the Bourne chair in poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he is a renowned teacher. In the Cortland Review interview, he described teaching’s greatest rewards: “you see people get excited by poetry. You see their lives changed by poetry. You see someone beginning to learn how to articulate and express themselves in this very tight art form, in this very distilled manner. You see all sorts and hear all sorts of really human stuff, really human business.”  His many awards and honors include the Kinglsley Tufts Poetry Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.