Haxton, Brooks 1950-

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HAXTON, Brooks 1950-

PERSONAL: Born December 1, 1950, in Greenville, MI; son of Kenneth (a musician and writer) and Josephine (a writer under pseudonym Ellen Douglas) Haxton; married 1983; wife's name, Frances (a physician); children: Isaac; Miriam and Lillie (twins). Education: Beloit College, B.A. (English literature), 1972; Syracuse University, M.A. (magna cum laude; creative writing), 1982.

ADDRESSES: Home—845 Maryland Ave., Syracuse, NY 13210.

CAREER: Educator, poet, and translator. Teacher of creative writing at George Mason University, University of Maryland, Sarah Lawrence College, Syracuse University, and Warren Wilson College.

AWARDS, HONORS: Recipient of awards and fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation, Academy of American Poets, Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts, and Ingram Merrill Foundation.

WRITINGS:

The Lay of Eleanor and Irene (narrative poem), Countryman Press (Woodstock, VT), 1985.

Dominion (poems; "Knopf Poetry" series), Knopf (New York, NY), 1986.

Traveling Company (poems), Knopf (New York, NY), 1989.

Dead Reckoning (narrative poem), Story Line Press (Santa Cruz, CA), 1989.

Tennessee Williams: Orpheus of the American Stage (television production), American Masters, PBS, 1994.

The Sun at Night (poems), Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

(Translator) Dances for Flute and Thunder: Praises, Prayers, and Insults: Poems from the Ancient Greek, Viking (New York, NY). 1999.

Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero (poems), Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

(Translator) Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, foreword by James Hillman, Viking (New York, NY), 2001.

(Translator and author of introduction) Victor Hugo, Selected Poems, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Uproar: Antiphonies to Psalms (poems), Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor of poetry to periodicals, including Poetry, Kenyon Review, Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, New Republic, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and American Poetry Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Brooks Haxton is the author of a number of books of poetry, narrative poems, and translations. His narrative poem, The Lay of Eleanor and Irene, is an exploration of romantic love, in this case by Howard, whose lover Eleanor is also having an affair with Irene. Howard learns this after pursuing the beautiful Irene for his own pleasure. "Haxton will no doubt find this raunchy, mock-philosophical tour de force a very hard act to follow," commented Sally A. Lodge in Publishers Weekly.

Dominion, is Haxton's debut collection of poems, and in the first, titled "Breakfast ex Animo," a rat snake attacks a henhouse and swallows the porcelain doorknob that has been slipped under a hen. A Booklist reviewer said that this long poem is "based on careful observations fashioned in lines as precisely, cunningly contrived as a strand of DNA." Marianne Boruch wrote in American Poetry Review that "what surprises is how unruly in the best way this book is, shifting from lyric to narrative, from the colloquial … to language of a higher, almost staged order."

David Kirby, who reviewed Dominion in the New York Times Book Review, said the poems are also "darkly humorous and clearly indebted to the tall tale tradition of the West and South. … Notafewofthe poems deal with ultimate error, just as the humor of Mark Twain's novels is counterpointed by drownings and shootings."

In reviewing Traveling Company in Hudson Review, Andrew Hudgins wrote that Haxton "is a poet who, rare these days, loves the tour de force—a poet who repeatedly tests his skill against difficult formal challenges in both metrical and free verse." In a Publishers Weekly review, Penny Kaganoff noted that in this collection, there are many references to family and said that Haxton's poems "maintain a tone of startled, almost awed, pleasure as they regard the world and its events."

TriQuarterly reviewer Willard Spiegelman wrote of Haxton, "With his spilling-over lines, his rich syntax, his luscious landscapes, his formal variety, and experimentation, he combines a Southerner's interest in nature … with a lyricist's concern for sound and music."

In Dead Reckoning, a novel written in verse, Conwell Eddy is a Vietnam vet who steals his father's body from the hospital and buries it in a Native mound. In doing so, he meets Amy, a drug addict willing to trade sex for drug money, and whose husband grows marijuana in a swamp and has been jailed for dealing. When Conwell discovers a valuable Native hatchet, he decides to sell it to a collector to raise cash for an escape, and it is then that "the already peculiar southern Gothic tale turns into a chase melodrama," said Ray Olson in Booklist.

"Dialogue is done smoothly, naturally," commented Dick Allen in Hudson Review. "And because the novel is written in verse rather than straight prose, abrupt transitions between scenes and episodes are easily accepted."

For his third collection of poems, titled The Sun at Night, Haxton writes in several styles of verse on a wide variety of subjects and experiences, and particularly about those that come at different stages of a man's life, beginning with childhood. "The result," wrote Stan Friedman in the New York Times Book Review, "is a book that employs lyrical beauty, harsh realism, boyish romanticism, and brushstrokes of regret in the service of a host of subjects, from flowers to love to the study of the planets." Library Journal's Christine Stenstrom said that this collection "clearly demonstrates that Haxton is a poet of impressive technical and aesthetic sophistication."

Dances for Flute and Thunder: Praises, Prayers, and Insults: Poems from the Ancient Greek is a collection of translations of the work of more than three dozen poets across thirteen centuries. The volume includes prayers, love lyrics, blessings, fables, curses, lamentations, and drinking songs. What Haxton shows in providing these translations is that the ancient Greeks were just like us, plagued with the same fundamental problems and made joyous by the same pleasures and experiences.

A Kirkus Reviews writer called Haxton's efforts "pure pleasure: witty, sexy, nasty, drunken, glorious, affectionate," and a "superb introduction to Greek poetry." "I have found these poems to be great daily friends, which of course is what great poems are supposed to be," wrote George Saunders in Washington Post Book World.

In reviewing Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero in the New York Times Book Review, Emily Nussbaum wrote that "the most successful series is also the book's most tender: a set piece entitled 'What if the Old Love Should Return'—troubled poems from a married man to the girlfriend who dumped him years ago, and who has now contacted him again, unleashing old fantasies and fears." "But more often," said Nussbaum, "Haxton's obsession with the mossy underside of middle-aged sexual obsession wears thin. There's an odd combination here of Larkinesque self-loathing and romantic nature imagery, cut with bathos, then cut again with quotations from Catullus—an ambitious formula that ultimately corrodes the emotional engine, like a mix of acid and sugar."

A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that "the generic themes of middle age are spiked with the middle-class guilt of a protest-era child who suddenly finds that he is part of the status quo."

Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus consists of translations by Haxton of the 130 fragments that remain of On Nature, the great book by Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived 2,500 years ago, at about the same time as Confucius. Time reviewer Lance Morrow said that "the thoughts remain fresh and profound. Haxton's translation shines them up handsomely."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Poetry Review, March, 1987, Marianne Boruch, review of Dominion, p. 1987.

Booklist, August, 1986, review of Dominion, p. 1656; August, 1989, Ray Olson, review of Dead Reckoning, p. 1943.

Hudson Review, autumn, 1990, Dick Allen, review of Dead Reckoning, pp. 509-520; winter, 1990, Andrew Hudgins, review of Traveling Company, pp. 675-676.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1999, review of Dances for Flute and Thunder: Praises, Prayers, and Insults: Poems from the Ancient Greek, p. 1772.

Library Journal, April 1, 1986, Robert Hudzik, review of Dominion, p. 153; May 15, 1989, Fred Muratori, review of Traveling Company, p. 69; August, 1995, Christine Stenstrom, review of The Sun at Night, p. 79; February 1, 2002, Daniel L. Guillory, review of Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero, p. 105.

New York Times Book Review, October 12, 1986, David Kirby, review of Dominion, pp. 32-33; January 7, 1996, Stan Friedman, review of The Sun at Night, p. 20; December 30, 2001, Emily Nussbaum, review of Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly, April 26, 1985, Sally A. Lodge, review of The Lay of Eleanor and Irene, p. 80; March 31, 1989, Penny Kaganoff, review of Traveling Company, p. 53; June 30, 1989, Penny Kaganoff, review of Dead Reckoning, p. 96; September 24, 2001, review of Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero, p. 88.

Time, March 19, 2001, Lance Morrow, review of Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, p. 78.

TriQuarterly, winter, 1990, Willard Spiegelman, review of Traveling Company, pp. 250-264.

Virginia Quarterly Review, winter, 1987, review of Dominion, p. 27.

Washington Post Book World, December 3, 2000, George Saunders, review of Dances for Flute and Thunder, p. 6; August 12, 2001, Dennis Drabelle, review of Fragments, p. T15.