Circus Days and Nights Author:Robert Lax Jack Kerouac called Robert Lax "one of the great original voices of our times...a Pilgrim in search of beautiful innocence, writing lovingly, finding it, simply, in his own way." Though many hold him to be one of the greatest American poets of this century, Lax has maintained a low profile, living and writing in seclusion on the Greek island of ... more »Patmos. In Circus Poems, Lax's three great long poems on the circus--"Circus of the Sun," "Mogador's Book," and "Sunset City"--are collected together for the first time, placing this early masterwork in the position within American literature that it so richly deserves.
Each of the three poems in this collection expresses a reverence for the acts of daring, beauty, and grace that make the circus the singular event it is. What also emerges is the drawing of a link between this world of the circus--wherein a tent is erected, acts are per-formed, and then the tent is disassembled only to be re-erected the next day--and Lax's faith. As Denise Levertov has said, "the radiant security of Lax's faith appears in his work as a serenity of tone."
Fields were set
for the circus,
stars for shows
before ever
elephant lumbered or
tent rose.
-- from Circus of the Sun
"Among America's greatest poets, a true minimalist who can weave awesome poems from remarkably few words."-- The New York Times Book Review« less