Circus Days and Nights

Circus Days and Nights

Jack Kerouac called Robert Lax â€œone of the great original voices of our timesâ€¦a Pilgrim in search of beautiful innocence, writing lovingly, finding it, simply, in his own way.â€

Though many hold him to be one of the greatest American poets of this century, Lax has maintained a low profile, living and writing in seclusion on the Greek island of Patmos. In Circus Days & Nights, Lax's three great long poems on the circusâ€”â€œCircus of the Sun,â€ â€œMogador's Book,â€ and â€œSunset Cityâ€â€”are collected together for the first time, placing this early masterwork in the position within American literature that it so richly deserves. Each of the three poems in this collection expresses a reverence for the acts of daring, beauty, and grace that make the circus the singular event it is. What also emerges is the drawing of a link between this world of the circusâ€”wherein a tent is erected, acts are performed, and then the tent is disassembled only to be re-erected the next dayâ€”and Lax's faith. As Denise Levertov has said, â€œthe radiant security of Laxâ€™s faith appears in his work as a serenity of tone.â€

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