Thomas Lux

Thomas Lux
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Born	(1946-12-10) December 10, 1946 Northampton, Massachusetts
Occupation	Poet

Thomas Lux (born December 10, 1946) is an American poet that holds the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne, Jr. Chair in Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and runs Georgia Tech's "Poetry at Tech" program.

Early life and education

Thomas Lux was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, son of a milkman and a Sears & Roebuck switchboard operator, neither of whom graduated from high school. Lux was raised in Massachusetts on a dairy farm. He was, according to those who knew him in high school, very good at baseball, basketball and golf. Classmates also recall that he had a "terrific sense of humor."

He graduated from Emerson College in Boston, where he was also poet in residence from 1970–1975. His first book—Memory's Handgrenade—was published shortly after.

Academic career

Since 1975, Lux has been a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. Lux is also a core faculty member of the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. In 1996 he was a visiting professor at University of California, Irvine. A former Guggenheim Fellow and three times a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lux received, in 1995, the $50,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his sixth collection, Split Horizons. His poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and many other anthologies.

He currently holds the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne, Jr. Chair in Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and runs their Poetry at Tech program, which includes one of the best known poetry reading series as well as community outreach classes and workshops.

Bibliography

• The Land Sighted (chapbook, 1970)
• Memory's Handgrenade (1972)
• Madrigal on the Way Home (chapbook, 1976)
• The Glassblower's Breath (1976)
• Sunday (1979)
• Like a Wide Anvil from the Moon the Light (chapbook, 1980)
• Massachusetts (chapbook, 1981)
• Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy (chapbook, 1983)
• Half Promised Land (1986)

• The Drowned River (1990)
• A Boat in the Forest (chapbook, 1992)
• Pecked to Death by Swans (chapbook, 1993)
• Split Horizon (1994)
• The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early Poems, 1970–1975 (1996)
• New and Selected Poems, 1975–1995 (1997)
• The Street of Clocks (2001)
• The Cradle Place (2004)
• God Particles (2008)
• Child Made of Sand (2012)

External links

• Love It Hard: Thomas Lux On Poetry, profile and interview with Sally Molini in Cerise Press, Summer 2009
• Academy of American Poets profile
• A few poems by Thomas Lux
• Online interview with Lux
• Poetry at Tech