{"id":283,"date":"2008-04-03T19:17:58","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T23:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/08\/thomas-lux-first-song\/"},"modified":"2009-08-08T19:28:58","modified_gmt":"2009-08-08T23:28:58","slug":"thomas-lux-first-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/03\/thomas-lux-first-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Lux, “The First Song”"},"content":{"rendered":"

was sung after the first stone was thrown at a beast,
\nafter a spear in a man’s hand
\nbrought down a pile of meat.
\nOf course we sang of that!
\nWe hardly had a language and we sang.
\nWe sang the stories, which turned into better stories,
\nwhich is why stories are told
\nand told again. Then, when we had more time<\/p>\n

and bellies full enough with food,
\nwe sang of love. But it began
\nwith stones and sharpened sticks,
\nthen sharpened sticks hardened
\nin fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"thomas-lux-headshot.jpg\"From God Particles<\/i><\/a>, Lux’s eleventh collection. Last month, Elizabeth Hoover observed how “Lux prizes simplicity in language<\/a>, and his deceptively plainspoken style allows for powerful images,” in a review for the LA Times<\/i>. In that vein, I love his earlier poem “The People of the Other Village<\/a>.” <\/p>\n

In an interview with The Cortland Review<\/i><\/a>, Lux commented on poetry readings: “A lot of poets don’t read their work well, don’t write their work with the intention of it being read out loud, but they still do readings, for the check, obviously, but nothing is duller than a monotone reading of work that’s essentially incomprehensible—and there’s a lot of that. I would rather have lit matches stuck in my ear.” He’s not like that; you can hear him read “Render, Render<\/a>” at the Academy of American Poets website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

was sung after the first stone was thrown at a beast, after a spear in a man’s hand brought down a pile of meat. Of course we sang of that! We hardly had a language and we sang. We sang the stories, which turned into better stories, which is why stories are told and told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}