Synopses & Reviews
Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best-loved poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth poet laureate of the United States.
Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his brilliant poetic imagery; his social, political, and moral alertness; his uncanny ability to make the ordinary extraordinary; and not least, a sardonic humor all his own. Gathering much of his material from the seemingly mundane minutia of American culture, Simic matches meditations on spiritual concerns and the weight of history with a nimble wit, shifting effortlessly to moments of clear vision and intense poetic revelation.
"Few poets have been as influential--or as inimitable--as Charles Simic." --The New York Times Book Review
"It takes just one glimpse of Charles Simic's work to establish that he is a master, ruler of his own eccentric kingdom of jittery syntax and signature insight." --Los Angeles Times
Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1938, and immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1954, at the age of sixteen. Recently retired from the University of New Hampshire, where he taught American literature and creative writing, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and held a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant from 1984 to 1989. He is the winner of the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Review
"The range of Charles Simic's imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery. He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor." --James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress
"[Simic] draws on the dark satire of Central Europe, the sensual rhapsody of Latin America, and the fraught juxtapositions of French Surrealism, to create a style like nothing else in American literature. Yet [his] verse remains recognizably American--not just in its grainy, hard-boiled textures, straight out of 1940s film noir, but in the very confidence of its eclecticism." --Adam Kirsch, New York Sun
Review
"Any new book by Charles Simic is a cause for celebration. He's had a long and illustrious career as poet, critic, and memoirist, and his weird, sometimes funny, often disturbing insights on the human predicament are always rewarding....Sixty Poems is a careful and loving distillation of the most recent phase of Simic's work." Chris Faatz, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best known poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.
Synopsis
To celebrate Simics appointment as the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States, 60 of his best-known poems are collected in this work.
Synopsis
Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best known poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.
Synopsis
Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best known poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.
About the Author
Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1938, and immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1954, at the age of 16. Recently retired from University of New Hampshire, where he taught American literature and creative writing, he was appointed the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States in August 2007. He has published more than 20 collections of poetry, as well as essay collections, translations, and a memoir. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and held a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant from 1984 to 1989. The Academy of American Poets has just named him winner of the Wallace Stevens Award.
Table of Contents
Contents
From Unending Blues, 1986
Toward Nightfall 3
Against Whatever It Is Thats Encroaching 6
From The Book of Gods and Devils, 1990
St. Thomas Aquinas 9
Factory 11
Shelley 12
The Devils 15
The White Room 17
The Big War 19
Paradise 20
In the Library 21
From Hotel Insomnia, 1992
The Prodigal 25
Hotel Insomnia 26
The Tiger 27
A Book Full of Pictures 29
Evening Walk 30
Romantic Sonnet 31
The Old World 32
Country Fair 33
From A Wedding in Hell, 1994
Paradise Motel 37
The Clocks of the Dead 38
Leaves 39
Transport 40
Crazy About Her Shrimp 41
Reading History 42
Empires 44
Mystics 45
Via del Tritone 46
The Secret 47
From Walking the Black Cat, 1996
Mirrors at 4 a.m. 51
Cameo Appearance 52
What the Gypsies Told My Grandmother While She Was Still a Young Girl 53
Little Unwritten Book 54
Slaughterhouse Flies 55
An Address with Exclamation Points 56
Entertaining the Canary 57
Ghosts 58
At the Cookout 60
Club Midnight 62
Pastoral Harpsichord 63
Have You Met Miss Jones? 64
From Jackstraws, 1999
The Soul Has Many Brides 69
Mummys Curse 70
The Common Insects of North America 71
The Toy 72
From Night Picnic, 2001
Unmade Beds 79
The One to Worry About 80
Sunday Papers 81
The Altar 82
My Father Attributed Immortality to Waiters 83
The Lives of the Alchemists 84
From The Voice at 3:00 a.m., 2003
Grayheaded Schoolchildren 87
Serving Time 88
Late September 89
From My Noiseless Entourage, 2005
Self-Portrait in Bed 93
To Dreams 94
My Noiseless Entourage 95
Description of a Lost Thing 96
My Turn to Confess 97
In the Planetarium 98
Pigeons at Dawn 99