Split Horizon CL

In ``Thrombosis Trombone'' Lux ( The Drowned River ) writes, ``What goes on inside / the body is a wonder.'' With Lux, the wonders of the world can be communicated in the jangling noise of his language and in his amazing manipulation of tone to suit his poetry's matter. He is singular among his peers in his ability to convey with a deceptive lightness the paradoxes of human emotion. Lux asks, ``Why this, / why that--'' about nature and existence while knowing that the answers can be at the same time speculative, serious, funny and true. In this, his sixth book, he writes about a number of things: left-handedness, money, biographies, boats, glow worms, irony. Lux conveys awe as well as compassion when describing the human condition, which is presented in ``The People of the Other Village'' to be both ``brutal'' and ``beautiful.'' These are generally short poems; two-thirds are a page long. In ``Fundamental,'' ``Job's Problems,'' and others, Lux stretches the subjects of the poems somewhat, in the latter to enrich a view of spiritual justice, but he seems afraid to challenge the reader with greater length. (Aug.)