That Little Something: Poems
by Charles Simic
from Harcourt
In his eighteenth collection, Charles Simic, the superb poet of the vaguely ominous sound and the disturbing, potentially significant image, moves closer to the dark heart of history and human behavior.
Simic understands the strange interplay between ordinary life and extremes, between reality and imagination, and he writes with absolute purity about those contradictory but simultaneous states of being or feeling: "Everything about you / My life, is both / Make-believe and real."
A profoundly important poet for our time, and a stunning book.
SECRET HISTORY
Of the light in my room:
Its mood swings,
Dark-morning glooms,
Summer ecstasies.
Spider on the wall,
Lamp burning late,
Shoes left by the bed,
I'm your humble scribe.
Dust balls, simple souls
Conferring in the corner.
The pearl earring she lost,
Still to be found.
Silence of falling snow,
Night vanishing without trace,
Only to return.
I'm your humble scribe.
The World Doesn't End
by Charles Simic
from Harvest Books
Yugoslavian-born Charles Simic, who came to the U.S. in 1954, is known as a creator of poetic fantasy. In this volume, he constructs bizarre, startling and entertaining visions in short descriptive sentences that pile one incongruous turn upon another, building images that are fresh and full of surprise. Like the river in one poem which flows backward, the power of Simic's inner world derives from turning logic on its head and taking a look from another direction. This collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990.
Sixty Poems
by Charles Simic
from Harvest Books
Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems
by Vasko Popa
from Oberlin College Press
The astonishing distillations that make up the poetry of Vasko Popa combine elements of surrealism, folklore, and trenchant logic. This major figure in the postwar literature of Eastern Europe is here presented in a revised and expanded version of the volume that won the PEN Translation Prize in 1979. The present edition adds two new sequences, "Give Me Back My Rags" and "Heaven's Ring," as well as new sections of the famous series, "The Little Box." It offers a unique acquaintance with a wonderful poet. A book for surrealists, mythographers, postmodernists, scientists, and lovers of folklore and games.
The Serbian poet Vasko Popa is one of the most distinctive and original voices in contemporary European poetry. His translator, Charles Simic, has published many volumes of poems, translation, and essays. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize as well as a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, among numerous other awards.
The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems
by Charles Simic
from Harvest Books
The poems in this collection--spanning two decades of his work--present a rich and varied survey of a remarkable lyrical journey.
The Monster Loves His Labyrinth
by Charles Simic
from Ausable Press
"Nabokovian in his caustic charm and sexy intelligence, Simic perceives the mythic in the mundane and pinpoints the perpetual suffering that infuses human life with both agony and bliss. . . . And he is the master of juxtaposition, lining up the unlikeliest of pairings and contrasts as he explores the nexuses of madness and prophecy, hell and paradise, lust and death."-Donna Seaman, Booklist
Written over many years, this book is a collection of notebook entries by our current Poet Laureate.
Excerpts:
Stupidity is the secret spice historians have difficulty identifying in this soup we keep slurping.
Ars poetica: trying to make your jailers laugh.
American identity is really about having many identities simultaneously. We came to America to escape our old identities, which the multiculturalists now wish to restore to us.
Ambiguity is the world's condition. Poetry flirts with ambiguity. As a "picture of reality" it is truer than any other. This doesn't mean that you're supposed to write poems no one understands.
The twelve girls in the gospel choir sang as if dogs were biting their asses.
What an outrage! This very moment gone forever!
Wonderful Words, Silent Truth: Essays on Poetry and a Memoir (Poets on Poetry)
by Charles Simic
from University of Michigan Press
Walking the Black Cat
by Charles Simic
from Harvest Books
Hotel Insomnia
by Charles Simic
from Harvest Books
The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs (Poets on Poetry)
by Charles Simic
from University of Michigan Press
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