Congratulations to Robert Archer on producing this magnificent book, a must for all propliner fans.

The photographs are simply superb and vividly evoke the lost era of the propliners, as well as going on through the sixties, showing the steady advance of jets and eventual disappearance of the propliners. I even liked the photos of the jets!

what a glorious showcasing of the world's PREMIER plane-spotting airport! Although some fabulous spotting can be had today, AIRLINERS AT LAX recalls the halcyon, diverse days when so many unique paint schemes could be seen as a matter of daily standard at LAX! Informative, descriptive, and simply delightful--a trip back into time!

As a flight attendant, this book brought back great memories of my first years flying in and out of LAX. A book for everyone to have

Robert Lax,who died late last year back in his "home" of Olean,N.Y.,was a writer of spare,minimalist poetry and prose.Lauded by his comtempories{writers as diverse as Levertov,Kerouac,Maxwell and Thomas Merton considered him an absolutelt essential poet}He writes about the Large{the title piece, a reworking of the intoduction to the Gospel of John} to colors. He work is so spare that it becomes meditative. In the early 1960's Lax moved to the island of Patmos,and began life as a hermit. His speech{and poerty }became even more lean,essentially stripping away whatever he viewed as accretion.One poem written like a cascading waterfall, simply spells out colors. His greatest work, the circus of the sun, is reprinted here in part. Lax travelled with a canadian circus for awhile, and viewed the circus,metaphorically, as life. This volume is rounded out with some dairies he keopt in the mid 60's on the Greek Islands. I believe that generations to come will view him as one of the great poets of the century.For that he certainly was. An essential volume!

This book describes silence in gorgeous prose and poetry. I recommend it to anyone who loves the sound and feel of the written word and the sound and feel of quiet.

Voila, the compacted dithers of mutton & larks! Ecco, predicted lathers of metro & lux! Lo, the monastic matters of mirrors & lakes! Zounds, the hermetic spiels of motor & locks! Behold, the gathered deepistles of monachus & littera! Witness the mighty phrasings of miracle lustrum! All hail the bibliotickles, viva the dublintenders, long live the fortunetells of hoy & halloo! Heed the prophetic warblings of minus & linus! Lament the bombastic tangles of mittwoch & letznacht! Observe the respected nightingales, doves & coulombians. Celebrate the valiantimes scattered by freundlich & freud! Three cheers for the bandied ampersands of max & louie, the mingled missives of joyful eremites.

This volume of 55 or 60 letters represents a portion of the witty, buoyant, exuberant correspondence between Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-68) and minimalistic poet Robert Lax (1915-2000); the two were classmates at Columbia University in the late 1930s, and lifelong friends thereafter.

Persons familiar with the dizzying puns and polyglottal juggleries of James Joyce's prose or Estlin Cummings' poetry will find the language of these letters appealing; it helps, also, to be familiar with the life of Merton, the century's most celebrated monastic figure. Each letter is exquisitely crafted, mostly humorous; but the correspondents occasionally treat of serious matters, both political and personal, in their shared dialect.

This volume is valuable because we get to see Merton at his least soapboxish and at his most warmly affectionate. We are introduced to the quirky asceticism of Robert Lax, who was living in Kalymnos, Greece at the time these letters were written. And we are re-introduced to a childlike joy in artistic creation (yes; letters can be art).

This selection of letters, however, is about to be supplanted by a more plenary collection of the Merton/Lax letters, published under the title "When Prophecy Had a Voice," edited by Arthur Biddle. But for those who would like a comparatively inexpensive introduction to these effervescently creative minds, outdoing each other in verbal brio, lexical panache, and poetical elan, the Catch of Anti-Letters might be a dandy place to start.