Synopses & Reviews
This new collection of poems from Charles Simic demonstrates once again his wit, moral acuity, and brilliant use of imagery. His settings are a farmhouse porch, a used-clothing store, empty station platforms; his subjects love, futility, and the sense of an individual life lived among a crowd of literal and imaginary presences.
Both sharp and sympathetic, the poems of this collection confirm Simic's place as one of the most important and appealing poets of our time.
To Dreams
I'm still living at all the old addresses,
Wearing dark glasses even indoors,
On the hush-hush sharing my bed
With phantoms, visiting in the kitchen
After midnight to check the faucet.
I'm late for school, and when I get there
No one seems to recognize me.
I sit disowned, sequestered and withdrawn.
These small shops open only at night
Where I make my unobtrusive purchases,
These back-door movie houses in seedy neighborhoods
Still showing grainy films of my life,
The hero always full of extravagant hope
Losing it all in the end?-whatever it was-
Then walking out into the cold, disbelieving light
Waiting close-lipped at the exit.
Review
"These poems show a master craftsman at work."
Review
"Establishes Simic once again as a reliable master of his particular, melancholy, wry mode."
Review
PRAISE FOR CHARLES SIMIC
"Few contemporary poets have been as influential-or as inimitable- as Charles Simic."-THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"Simic, original and engaging, keeps us on our toes, guessing, questioning and looking at the world in a new way." -- Booklist
Review
PRAISE FOR CHARLES SIMIC
"Few contemporary poets have been as influential-or as inimitable- as Charles Simic."-THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Review
"Simic, original and engaging, keeps us on our toes, guessing, questioning and looking at the world in a new way."
Synopsis
"Charles Simic's writing comes dancing out on the balls of its feet, colloquially fit as a fiddle, a sparring partner for the world." --Seamus Heaney
Once again Charles Simic demonstrates his wit, his moral acuity, and extraordinary use of imagery. MY NOISELESS ENTOURAGE is haunted by marooned, wordless individuals, but also by a sense of indecipherable, constant chatter, the murmuring on the other side of the wall. Simic sheds light on the slow, distracted quality of rural life, and the paranoia, the suspicions of city-dwellers. An old man sits in his backyard with a rope in his hand. A flock of spooked starlings seem to have heard something no one else has. The lodger no one has ever seen, drawing her bath upstairs. The poet as a dog, growling at something out there he cannot bring himself to name.
A brilliant new collection by one of the most important poets of our time.
Synopsis
Praise for Charles Simic
"Few contemporary poets have been as influential-- or as inimitable-- as Charles Simic." --The New York Times Book Review
"He has infused American poetry with the freshest and most original style and imagery since e.e. cummings." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"His poems are crowded with uncanny presence, which he challenges with flirtatious directness." --The New Yorker
"There are few poets writing in America today who share his lavish appetite for the bizarre, his inexhaustible repertoire of indelible characters and gestures...Simic is perhaps our most disquieting muse." --Harvard Review
About the Author
CHARLES SIMIC was born in Belgrade and emigrated to the United States in 1954. He is the author of many books of poetry and prose. Among other honors, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and served as the Poet Laureate of the United States in 2007-2008.
Table of Contents
I
Description of a Lost Thing 3
Shading Exercise 4
Self-Portrait in Bed 5
To Dreams 6
The Gamblers Upstairs 7
Calamity Crier 8
The Alarm 9
My Noiseless Entourage 10
Fabulous Species and Landscapes 11
Used Clothing Store 15
The Centuries 16
Voyage to Cythera 17
II
Used Book Store 21
Hitchhikers 22
Graveyard on a Hill 23
The World Runs on Futility 24
Battling Grays 25
Sunlight 26
The Birdie 27
Minds Roaming 28
Cockroach Salon 29
Midnight Feast 30
One Chair 31
Insomnia's Cricket 32
Talk Radio 33
III
My Turn to Confess 37
The Hermetical and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus 38
On the Farm 39
I See Lots of Sticks on the Ground 40
Everybody Had Lost Track of Time 41
Brethren 42
Ask Your Astrologer 43
Kazoo Wedding 44
Snowy Morning Blues 45
To Fate 46
Slurred Words 47
Meeting the Captain 48
Sweetest 49
Leaves at Night 50
IV
Starlings in a Tree at Dusk 53
The Headline 54
The Tragic Sense of Life 55
The Role of Insomnia in History 56
In the Planetarium 57
In the Morning Half-Awake 58
The Absentee Landlord 59
He Heard with His Dead Ear 60
December 21 61
My Wife Lifts a Finger to Her Lips 62
Our Old Neighbor 63
Pigeons at Dawn 64