Robert Lax

Robert Lax (1915 – 2000) was an American poet.
Born in Olean, New York, Robert Lax studied at Columbia University and worked as an editor for the New Yorker, Jubilee and PAXEventually, however, he grew weary of the commercial aspect of life in New York, as well as traditional poetic forms. Working at a Catholic charity in Harlem inspired him to seek a simpler, more purposeful life, as well as a more authentic approach to writing – free from what he had come to see as artificial conventions.
Robert Lax then left behind a promising writing career in New York to travel with a circus, live among immigrants in postwar Marseille, and settle on a series of remote Greek islands where he learned and recorded the simple wisdom of the local population.
His minimalist poems tend to extend in a narrow, vertical column on the page, finding both variation and transformation within a small set of words, enveloping meaning and sound in the unity of the syllable.
Robert Lax returned to his hometown of Olean, New York, in the final weeks of his life.