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.