#robert lax

[garadinervi]

Robert Lax, wasser water l'eau, Photography by Bernard Moosbrugger, Pendo-Verlag, Zürich, 1973 [Bendowa Books, Holyoke, MA]

[saintsebastiensbf]

Alice Notley, In The Pines

Sylvia Plath, Lesbos

Mitski, Nobody

“I’m walking out now into the soft light, the cooling hum of evening, and I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and still many more, so very many more tomorrows.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Vera

E.E. Cummings, I Carry Your Heart with Me

Lucille Clifton, Mother-Tongue: After The Flood

Robert Lax

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Vi Khi Nao, Fish in Exile

Aurora, Exist For Love

Margaret Atwood, Late Poems

repetition in poetry // part iv

(part i) (part ii) (part iii) (part v)

[twopoppies]

Other things about Robert Lax: one of his most famous publications is called "Circus of the Sun" -- an excerpt: And in the beginning was love. Love made a sphere: all things grew within it; the sphere then encompassed beginnings and endings, beginning and end. Love had a compass whose whirling dance traced out asphere of love in the void: in the center thereof rose a fountain." He also has a book called "Green Island" and a poem called "Mostly Blue." You can't make this up.

shut the fuck up.

Another anon just told me he has a book called The Blue Boat

[horizontaldrawing]

robert lax, journeyman magazine covers

[sustentavelimaginario]

PRELÚDIO ... Tenho que acreditar que vai acontecer. Espero, e sei que vai acontecer. Espero por ti como se não esperasse. Anseio por ti como se não ansiasse. Faço todas as coisas como se as não fizesse, mas faco-as ainda assim, enquanto espero. No silêncio entre os sons tento escutar-te. Escutar não é como eu me dizer para fazer silêncio: é apenas escutar.

Robert Lax

[misserinmarie]

One of the things I wish for poetry is that it’s somehow useful. Like a lemon or a hair brush. Like a glass of water in the middle of the day. And to me, Lax’s poems feel useful. They offer me something that’s hard to find. A companion as close as my own breath & one who is invisible, like wind. Being inside a Lax poem is like being in a cemetery, which is a place where judgment can’t live. Like coming out of a lake and being a little stunned to sit or drink or walk on the Earth. That sort of woken up feeling you get and lose quickly. That feeling of having something quieted in you. I love that. Walking away from a party, hearing less and less voices, until suddenly, somehow, you’re under a tree in the middle of the night.

Alex Dimitrov, The Internet Is Over

[mychampagne-mybubbles]

The Circus of the Sun

Robert Lax

The You Are Home campaign brought the following tweet on 29.03.2022, a fragment from Robert Lax poem A Problem in Design:

Lax's main early work and one of his most highly praised is ''The Circus of the Sun'' is a volume of poetry that likens the circus to Creation, it includes the following:

Love as the origin of everything, represented as a not ending line, constant, infinite. Love, the epicenter, made the world go around, give sense to everything, meaning to life. A never ending path, traced by a compass that sustains and drives the whole into the right way by following its nature.

[ialwaysknewyouwerepunk]

Ellaaaa, I'm here jsut for for your read on today's poem from you are home

sooooo sorry for leaving you hanging there, anon, i was a little busy heheh buuuuuut i didn't want to leave this one unanswered, bc i think it's an amazing poem and all in all an interesting choice by harry

a problem in design by robert lax is a poem in between poetic styles, because lax was always experimenting with how far he could go to minimalism, though he came from writing more figurative poetry. he's from the same generation as the beats, who praised (and i say this in the nicest way possible bc i'm a big fan) word vomit instead of intricately crafted literature. it's super complex to understand all the different waves in the history of literature, and it's been a while for me now studying this, but basically people were trying to do less and less. move as far away from traditionally figurative literature as possible. lax, and this poem, is somewhere in the middle of that process. it's not a true minimalist poem, because you can still see a clear meaning behind the words and the sentences are pretty much still sentences. the poet makes a point, albeit a vague one (but it's poetry so it still adds up yk). this whole issue is actually what the poem is about, because lax was surrounded by peers who were going for the minimalist style and trying to rid their work of meaning, and especially erase their presence from their work.

how i interpret this poem by lax is basically: keep it simple. whatever you want to convey in your art, distil it as much as possible so that it's in its simplest form. the problem isn't in the message, but in the design of the poem. minimalists differed in opinions about meaning and how much should still be in their work, so here lax is saying to not leave out the meaning when getting rid of everything else. he's still saying that you should listen to someone else's advice about form, bc that was also his ideal, while someone else would just say 'eh i think i'm gonna keep drawing big flowers thanks.' lax is promoting minimalism as the highest art so ofc he won't say that.

what i think is interesting, then, is where this fits in with you are home and harry's art in general. harry really isn't known for keeping it simple or leaving out meaning. he seems to love putting as much meaning in as little words as possible, tbh. so what i think, then, is the tweet being just this part:

as making the point to not conform to other's rules about art (and in a broader sense about life) and just do whatever you feel like.

always be outrageous, if you like