Post by brianmo116 on May 31, 2013 22:46:02 GMT -5
Thomas Lux was born onto a modest dairy farm in 1946 in Northampton, Massachusetts. His father a milkman and his mother a switchboard operator, Lux and his family maintained a comfortable, albeit scarce, lifestyle. As a child, Lux is remembered for his athleticism as well as his sense of humor. Following high school, he attended Emerson College in Boston and obtained a degree in English.
Lux’s poetry career began shortly after his graduation, becoming the poet in residence at his alma mater for five years. It was there he composed his first volume of poetry to be published, “Memory’s Handgrenade,” which received widespread critical praise. Since then, Lux has maintained faculty positions at multiple universities such as Sarah Lawrence College in New York and Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Lux is also the recipient of numerous awards and grants regarding his poetry, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He holds the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr. in poetry at Georgia Institute of Technology, also running their Poetry at Tech program. Lux last year published his twelfth book of poetry, and has amassed a large amount of acclaim for his works over his forty-three year career.
Over his long career, Lux’s thematic style has evolved as much as his poetic skill. In his earlier books, Lux focuses primarily on the abstract, subscribing largely the Neo-Surrealist movement, which attempted to illustrate the bizarre imagery of dreams and the subconscious. Later, however, he began to move towards “a more direct treatment of immediately available, though no less strange, human experience.” He uses concrete and often historical anecdotes to portray his views on what it means to be human. His pairing of sarcastic tones and careful rhythms with powerful and startling imagery, creates “a body of work that is at once simple and complex, wildly imaginative and totally relevant.” His poetry is home to sharp contrasts between humor and sorrow, as he stated in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, "I like to make the reader laugh—and then steal that laugh, right out of the throat. Because I think life is like that, tragedy right alongside humor."
Lux’s early work was very abstract, and was also rather dark. Contemporary Poets contributor Richard Damashek wrote that Lux’s early work was "intensely personal…tormented and tortured, full of complex and disjointed images reflecting an insane and inhospitable world." With his fifth publication, “Half Promised Land”, Lux began adapting the style that characterizes much of his later work. The book abandons his past surrealist technique and focuses instead on “an increasingly careful and accurate depiction of the real world.” In later books, Lux utilizes a conversational tone to describe what one reviewer referred to as the “invisible millions populating the poems.”
Thomas Lux has managed to consistently and effectively create relevant, hard-hitting social commentary which is delivered in an interesting and harmonic fashion. It is truly an honor to welcome such a distinguished and recognized poet to our school community. Please join me in welcoming our 2013 Westfield High School Visiting Poet, Thomas Lux.
Lux’s poetry career began shortly after his graduation, becoming the poet in residence at his alma mater for five years. It was there he composed his first volume of poetry to be published, “Memory’s Handgrenade,” which received widespread critical praise. Since then, Lux has maintained faculty positions at multiple universities such as Sarah Lawrence College in New York and Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Lux is also the recipient of numerous awards and grants regarding his poetry, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He holds the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr. in poetry at Georgia Institute of Technology, also running their Poetry at Tech program. Lux last year published his twelfth book of poetry, and has amassed a large amount of acclaim for his works over his forty-three year career.
Over his long career, Lux’s thematic style has evolved as much as his poetic skill. In his earlier books, Lux focuses primarily on the abstract, subscribing largely the Neo-Surrealist movement, which attempted to illustrate the bizarre imagery of dreams and the subconscious. Later, however, he began to move towards “a more direct treatment of immediately available, though no less strange, human experience.” He uses concrete and often historical anecdotes to portray his views on what it means to be human. His pairing of sarcastic tones and careful rhythms with powerful and startling imagery, creates “a body of work that is at once simple and complex, wildly imaginative and totally relevant.” His poetry is home to sharp contrasts between humor and sorrow, as he stated in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, "I like to make the reader laugh—and then steal that laugh, right out of the throat. Because I think life is like that, tragedy right alongside humor."
Lux’s early work was very abstract, and was also rather dark. Contemporary Poets contributor Richard Damashek wrote that Lux’s early work was "intensely personal…tormented and tortured, full of complex and disjointed images reflecting an insane and inhospitable world." With his fifth publication, “Half Promised Land”, Lux began adapting the style that characterizes much of his later work. The book abandons his past surrealist technique and focuses instead on “an increasingly careful and accurate depiction of the real world.” In later books, Lux utilizes a conversational tone to describe what one reviewer referred to as the “invisible millions populating the poems.”
Thomas Lux has managed to consistently and effectively create relevant, hard-hitting social commentary which is delivered in an interesting and harmonic fashion. It is truly an honor to welcome such a distinguished and recognized poet to our school community. Please join me in welcoming our 2013 Westfield High School Visiting Poet, Thomas Lux.