Circus Days and Nights

For years one of the great poems of the twentieth century -- Circus of the Sun -- has been out of print. Now not only is it available once again, but the rest of Bob Lax's circus poetry is at last in print as well. Lax's love affair with the circus started by chance in 1943, during a period of his life when he was on the staff of The New Yorker and went along with a colleague to interview the Cristianis, a family of circus performers. In the years that followed, Lax often traveled with their circus, discovering in it an image of a less-damaged world. R.C. Kenedy said of it: "Circus of the Sun is, in all probability, the finest volume of poems published by an English-speaking poet of the generation which comes in the wake of T.S. Eliot." Lax's friendship with Thomas Merton is well known. He was also close to Jack Kerouac, who said of Lax that he was "one of the great original voices of our times ... a Pilgrim in search of beautiful innocence, writing lovingly, finding it, simply, in his own way."