Scope and Contents Stored in Robert Lax box.New York Times book review: To describe Robert Lax as a minimalist poet does scant justice to the reedlike shape of his "vertical" poems. A typical page in his most comprehensive book, "Poems (1962-1997)," might contain 20 words arranged in columnar form, a single syllable or punctuation mark to each line. One poem consists of "ro"‰/"‰ber"‰/"‰to" "” the name Lax was often called in his adopted country, Greece "” repeated three times, followed by "cries"‰/"‰the"‰/"‰roos"‰/"‰ter" with the final pair of syllables again thrice repeated.This can be curiously beguiling, over a brief period, but Lax's poetry has little of the visual playfulness or verbal ingenuity of like-minded members of that broad church known as concrete poetry, like Ian Hamilton Finlay, the Scottish poet and artist with whom Lax corresponded. In "Pure Act," Michael N. McGregor tells us more than once that Lax was mainly interested in writing for himself.McGregor, a professor at Portland...