I just finished reading Robert Lax’s A Thing That Is for the second time, partially because I liked it that much, but also because it’s easy to read because it’s only seventy-seven pages long, and most of those pages are made up of white space.

In reading this selection, I also have refined my feelings towards his unique style, one that places extraordinary empahsis on individual words. In short, I really appeciate its potential when it’s used in a poem like:

be
gin
by
be
ing

pa
tient

with
your
self

la
ter
you
can
be
pa
tient

with
oth
ers

(name
of
the
game

is
pa
tience.)

His style seems like a cross between Japanese haiku and e.e.cummings’ poetry, forcing each word to take on a special meaning that it often loses in everyday language.

In a poem like this, the emphasis on patience is reinforced by the very patience it takes to read the poem. The same thing can be said when Lax attempts to write meditative poems, and each word seems like a separate thought strung on a rosary.

Unfortunately, the style seems to me to get in the way in longer poems like “solemn dance,” which goes on for eight pages like this:

the
dance
of
the
waves

is
an
order
“d
dance

the
dance
of
the
waves

is
a
solemn
dance
…

Unfortunately, by the time I’d finished the poem I felt like I’d been lost at sea, and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling, certainly not one I’d pay $20 for again.

Robert Lax is nearly impossible to define. About the time you think you know his style, he introduces an entirely new style or concept.

Generally, his poems I like best tend to use short lines, one word, or even less, long. They are contemplative poems that force the reader to provide much of the content of the poem.

I was a little surprised, therefore, to find that my favorite poem in the first section of Circus Days and Nights was:

THE MORNING STARS

Have you seen my circus?
Have you known such a thing?
Did you get up in the early morning and see the wagons pull into town?
Did you see them occupy the field?
Were you there when it was set up?
Did you see the cookhouse set up in dark by lantern light?
Did you see them build the fire and sit around it smoking and talking quietly?
As the first rays of dawn came, did you see them roll in blankets and go to sleep?
A little sleep until time came to
unroll the canvas, raise the tent,
draw and carry water for the men and animals;
were you there when the animals came forth,
the great lumbering elephants to drag the poles and unroll the canvas?
Were you there when the morning moved over the grasses?
Were you there when the sun looked through dark bars of clouds
at the men who slept by the cookhouse fire?
Did you see the cold morning wind nip at their blankets?
Did you see the morning star twinkle in the firmament?
Have you heard their laughter around the cookhouse fire?
When the morning stars threw down their spears and watered heaven?
Have you looked at spheres of dew on spears of grass?
Have you watched the light of a star through a world of dew?
Have you seen the morning move over the grasses?
And to each leaf the morning is present.
Were you there when we stretched out the line,
when we rolled out the sky,
when we set up the firmament?
Were you there when the morning stars
sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

These long, flowing lines with their extended parallel structure seem to have been struck directly from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The ritual of setting up the circus in town after town isn’t a just a job, a burden, it is a joy because it is always a celebration of God’s firmament. The circus is a microcosm standing for our world where animals and men constantly celebrate God’s universe, bringing joy to those who come to watch the celebration.

Though I don’t reallly share Lax’s romantic view of the circus, I found it impossible not to identify with many of the performers portrayed in these poems and with what Lax clearly sees as their celebration of God and God’s miracles. Of course, Lax isn’t celebrating just the circus and its performers, but, rather, is celebrating those who celebrate God in their daily work.

For Lax, it becomes clear, there is no separation between everyday existence and God, unless we make that separation ourselves.

In another poem, Lax sees the circus as bringing Eden back to the those who have lost sight of it:

By day from town to town we carry
Eden in our tents and bring its won-
ders to the children who have lost
their dream of home.

If people think they have lost Eden forever, it is not because it is not there, but because people no longer recognize it when they see it.

When you read “Mogadar’s Book” and “Voyage to Pescara” in Circus Days and Night, you can begin to understand why Jack Kerouac might call Robert Lax “_one of the great original voices of our times” . Unfortunately, it’s difficult to capture the style of these two sections of Circus Days and Night in a few quotations.

“Mogadar’s Book,” though it’s not a continuous piece reads more like a single poem than a collection of poems. There are no titles in this section and though there are some obvious breaks, it’s not clear what these breaks indicate. Though there are several brilliant passages, they often do not seem to stand well on their own, only shining in their original context.

Perhaps the closing paragraph/poem best suggests the thrust of this section:

We are wanderers in the earth, but
only a few of us in each generation
have discovered the life of charity, the
living from day to day, receiving
our gifts gratefully through grace,
and rendering them, multiplied
through grace, to the giver. That
is the meaning of your expansive, out-
ward arching gesture of the arm in
the landing; the graceful rendering,
the gratitude and giving.

For Lax, it is the circus performers, at least the best of them, who receive their “gifts gracefully through grace” and, in turn, give them back to their audience.

“Voyage to Pescara” is equally unusual, a strange mixture of journal and poetry, an Americanized haibun, as it were, that concludes with a long journal entry. In some ways, the section reminds me a lot of my favorite bloggers, blending personal events, personal reflections, and reflections on life in general. In many ways, it reminds me of Kerouac’s posthumously published some of the dharma, both in its unevenness and in it’s attempts to combine poetry and prose in a journal.

At the very least, the work allows us to see Lax’s work as a whole in a clearer light, particularly passages like this:

The performer’s entrance is the place of the most (magic) activity. It is between the world of performance and preparation.

The moment before flowering (long) after planting. A moment before the bursting of the bud; almost the moment of bursting. When the flap opens, it is the bud unfurling; the green bud of the flower. A charmed place. It is within the tent, not of it. It is intimate with the tent, but has a wide door to the backlots.

To the audience
it is the tabernacle
from which
the
awaited
enters.

For the performers
it is a place
for a moment’s
rest.

It doesn’t seem far-fetched to me to identify the circus performers with all artists, particularly writers, of course, whose sacred duty is to bring the sacraments to their audience.

I wish I’d read Circus Days and Night before, rather than after, I read Love Had a Compass because I prefer that work to this one because I’m sure reading this one would have given me a greater understanding and appreciation of Love Had a Compass.