Circus Days and Nights

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 Patmos. In Circus Poems Laxs three great long poems on the circus--"Circus of the Sun " "Mogadors 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 Laxs faith. As Denise Levertov has said "the radiant security of Laxs 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 Americas greatest poets a true minimalist who can weave awesome poems from remarkably few words."-- The New York Times Book Review