Child Made of Sand

Readers familiar with Thomas Luxs quick-witted images ("e; Language without simile is like a lung/ without air"e;) and his rambunctious, Cirque-Du-Soleil-like imagination ("e; The Under-Appreciated Pontooniers"e;) will find in his new collection, Child Made of Sand, not only the signature funny, provocative, and poignant super-surrealism that has made him, along with Charles Simic, James Tate, and Dean Young, one of Americas most inventive and humane poets, but they will also find in a surprising series of homages, elegies, rants, and autobiographical poems a new register of language in which time and mortality echo and reverberate in quieter notes. In "e; West Shining Tree, "e; we can hear this shift in register when he asks: "e; Ill head dead West and ask of all I see:/ Which is the way, the long or the short way, / to the West Shining Tree? "e;