A thing that is

the long version

Robert Lax is one of the most original and important American poets of this century. His work is firmly rooted in the American avant garde tradition, a generation of artists that includes John Cage, William Burroughs and the Abstract Expressionist painters. This is his first volume of all new poems to be published in America since the 60s. Much as Bowles chose Tangier, Lax chose the Greek islands. After working in the 40s and 50s as an editor for the New Yorker, a film critic for Time and a Hollywood screenwriter, Robert Lax left the United States for permanent residence abroad, where for 35 years he has written the minimalist poetry that has won him acclaim among an ever-widening circle of artists and writers around the world. An early and continuing practitioner of abstract, minimalist and experimental concrete poetry, he has not wavered in his vision of creating a body of work with a purity that is radical in its asceticism and singleness of purpose.