NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
An independent small press poetry review
 ROBERT LAX: TERTIUM QUID Stride Publications 4b Tremayne Close Devoran Cornwall TR3 6QE UK ISBN 1 905024 02 9 £10 email Stride Publications visit the website of Stride Publications        Web design by  This page last updated: 11th December 2007. |
ROBERT LAX: TERTIUM QUID | |
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This is another book in the very pleasant Stride format. It is perfect bound and well-edited. There are over 130 pages of poetry. Robert Lax was born in America in 1915 and died in 2000. He spent his life developing an experimental style that drew the eye down the page. He did this by breaking phrases, by using enjambment, and by using only one or two words to a line: two levels at war within my soul: the sublime and the instinctiveas in MARCH 3 above, and by employing phrases with innovative jumps in meaning to lead the eye ever onwards through the writing: Earth's amniotic atmosphere (Wherein fleece clouds arch over us) Cleaves to the turning globe like flesh To feed the light and cover us.The above is from PASTORAL. The poems in this book are well crafted and dig deep into the psyche. They are discursive yet are able to home in where appropriate. As with much experimental poetry, one technique is repetition. The poem entitled IN LUMINE is a good example: Light the light is seen in Seeks the eye who only sees the lighted and the light; the lighted shows the light; the light, the lighted;The whole collection hangs together well and provides typical examples of the work of Robert Lax. | ||
| reviewer: Doreen King. |