Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Anyone who read Peter Campion's review of The Cradle Place before the book itself will be glad to know that it's much richer and more compelling than represented. The review seems to set out some extraneous aesthetic agenda, taking Lux to task for his take on accessibility, but never saying exactly what's at issue. When it focuses on the actual book, it draws on the mistaken assumption that difficult language equals subtle meaning. Fortunately, Lux hasn't fallen into that trap, but gone the far subtler route of embedding compelling observation in everyday speech. Even a cursory glance at the poems' craft will show an attention to rhythm and music far above the "inane joke e-mail" to which Campion likens the example poem. His comments on Johnson's Shrubberies—its "attempt to reconcile naturalism with metaphysics," its subtle overlapping of "natural facts" with "spiritual facts," and its "[eluding] of expected structures"—could much more accurately be applied to The Cradle Place. In fact, the review of Johnson is inadvertently one of the best reviews of Lux in recent months.