What do you think the real meaning of “innovative writing” is or should be?

Was it Paul Valéry who said, “Ah, the avant garde, the only thing that never changes.”? That said: People should write whatever the hell they want, however they want. All kinds of poetry. Room for all kinds. What’s good will stick around for a while, what’s not will dry up and blow away.

When it comes to reading poems for an audience, you’re considered a rock star — it is definitely a sharing, the delivery too honest and direct to be called a performance…

My reading style has certainly evolved, but more or less has been the same for a few decades. My poems are meant to be read aloud. They are written to be human speech. Usually, the speaker of my poems is a little agitated, a little smart-ass, a little angry, satirical, despairing. Or, sometimes he’s goofy, somewhat elegiac, full of praise and gratitude. I make it a point to read loud enough and to enunciate as best I can. It would be rude to do otherwise. I also make a point of never reading too long.

God Particles
BY Thomas Lux
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008)

Split Horizon (Houghton Mifflin, 1994) has a tighter focus than God Particles, your latest book. The poems in God Particles are looser in their connective tissue, and darker, mixing the physical and intangible in a humorous and satirical way. Has your writing gotten edgier and less linear over time?

My connective tissues do not always connect, I know, but they try to. That’s a risk one takes and when it fails then it is my failure and not the reader’s. Edgier and a little less linear: yes. God Particles IS a darker book. It was written in dark years — post 9/11.

I think one uses humor/satire to help combat the darkness. I do.

The title poem, “God Particles,” begins: “God explodes, supernovas, and down upon the whole planet / a tender rain of him falls.” Then, toward the middle of the poem:

These lines (as is the entire poem and collection) are simultaneously funny, sad, ironic, compassionate, mocking, and spiritual. There is such emotional and tonal range, from “Toad on Golf Tee” to “The Gentleman Who Spoke Like Music” yet a definite common-sense, serio-comic down-to-earthiness lurks throughout the collection as if implying that we humans should know better, be above all the nonsense to which we seem endlessly addicted (war, cruelty, superficial spirituality, etc). Could you say something about the impetus behind this collection?

Please write the first two sentences of your last question into a review of God Particles!

I believe you’re spot on and probably have a better grasp of the poems than I do. One impetus of the book, particularly the 10 poems in the middle, is my quarrel with, my loathing of, religious intolerance, of any kind, any religion. Or, any non-religious intolerance. I define religious intolerance as having a range from someone simply proselytizing on a level that produces annoyance in the person to whom it’s directed to someone who believes they have the right to kill someone who doesn’t believe what they believe. A lethal (and tedious) combination: ignorance and certainty. The book pays attention to the world, which is dark. It has some sweet notes too, I hope, and love.