The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedRobert Lax
Title QuotedCircus of the Sun
Date (Year/Month/Day)1959/12/20
ImprintNew York : Journeyman Books. 1959
QuotationLax's Circus book is a tremendous poem, an Isaias-like prophecy which has a quality you just don't find in poetry today, a completely unique simplicity and purity of love that is not afraid to express itself. The circus as symbol and sacrament, cosmos and church-the mystery of the primitive world, of paradise, in which men have wonderful and happy skills, which they exercise freely, as at play. But also a sacrament of the eschaton, our heavenly Jerusalem. The importance of human love in the circus-for doing things well. It is one of the few poems that has anything whatever to say. And I want to write an article about it.
Quotation SourceA Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, 1952-1960.; Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 360-61
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