A new collection of poems from Thomas Lux, the Kingsley Tufts Award-winning author of The Street of Clocks and The Cradle Place God Particles displays the distinctive originality and unpredictability that prompted the Washington Post Book World to name Lux one of this generation's most gifted poets. A satiric edge, tempered by profound compassion, cuts through many of the poems in Lux's book. While themes of intolerance, inhumanity, loss, and a deep sense of mortality mark these poems, unexpected moments of grace instill even the darkest moments with an unexpected sweetness. In the title poem Lux writes, there's no reason for God to feel guilt / I think He was downhearted, weary, too weary / to be angry anymore . . . / He wanted each of us, / and all the things we touch, . . . / to have a tiny piece of him / though we are unqualified, / of even the crumb of a crumb. Dark, humorous, and strikingly imaginative, this is Lux's most compassionate work to date.
