Charles Simic Books

Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990)

Charles Simic won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The World Doesn't End, and it is blessedly easy to see why. This collection (which, despite its subtitle, is mostly prose poems, with a few "regular" poems thrown in for good measure) could easily be a primer for the aspiring poet on exactly how to write a prose poem. (Would that more who attempt it had read this!) In the days when prose poetry has fallen so far from the poetic tree that a new subgenre, "flash fiction," had to be invented for the mass of the unpoetic claptrap, Simic gives us a book full of wonderful tall tales, flights of fancy, and utterly poetic language, all without ever once straying from the idea that what he is writing in these small pieces is, in fact, poetry.

"The dog went to dancing school. The dog's owner sniffed vials of Viennese air. One day the two heard the new Master of the Universe pass their door with a heavy step. After that, the man exchanged clothes with his dog. It was a dog on two legs, wearing a tuxedo, that they led to the edge of the common grave. As for the man, blind and deaf as he came to be, he still wags his tail at the approach of a stranger." --untitled (p. 40)

The World Doesn't End caused me to re-evaluate my ideas on what poetry is. Perhaps it is not, as Eliot would have it, language elevated; perhaps, instead, it is language as it should be. The standard as opposed to the elevation, the diction we should be striving for in our daily lives.

The finest book of poetry to cross my desk since Reznikoff's classic By the Waters of Manhattan half a decade ago. Must reading for poetry fans, and engaging stuff in prose form for those who don't do poetry. Just think of it as the best flash fiction ever written. In any case, whatever you have to do to convince yourself to do so, read this book. *****

It hardly seems worthwhile for me to review this book since literally every blurb of it I've read here has been a 5-star rave. Nonetheless, I felt like I should add my $0.02US.

I may be unfairly biased, as this slim volume was my first introduction to Mr. Simic's work. Maybe if I'd read, say, "Walking the Black Cat" I would feel the same way about it, but be that as it may, I can safely say that "The World Doesn't End" is one of the best books I've read in any genre. I clearly remember the experience of reading it for the first time. Mr. Simic's tone is so direct and intimate that he immediately draws you in and then, when he's got you where he wants you, he proceeds to completely take you apart. The ground slips from under your feet. Tiny bombs explode in the foundational tissues of your cortex. Realigments occur.

My only regret is that I can never have the same experience again because... I've already read the damned book! Will someone please figure out a way to erase my memory so that I can go back and do it again? Simic. Are you working on this?

A truly original mystical poet. Reading this book was expensive for me, leaving me no choice but to order numerous, Charles Simic books.

The World Doesn't End surprised me in many ways. It was unlike any other volume of his work I have yet read. I was so enthralled I read it cover to cover twice in the first week after I received it. I would have to say that this volume and Simic's "A Wedding in Hell" are two of my favorite volumes of poetry by any poet. Simic has a gift for combining the grotesque/bizarre with the everyday and condensing them down into compact poems that evoke the experience of lucid dreams. I highly recommend this small book!

In a time when many critics despise the prose poem, brushing it aside, refusing to accept such work into the usual canon of lyric poetry, Charles Simic defies all boundaries, combining prose form with a lyrical quality often absent in accepted "lyric" verse.
Simic's world of fantasy and surrealism don't come off as dreamy as one might think. If anything, he is somewhat of a journalist, reporting on events, images, people, animals, gypsies, etc., but from a purely personal perspective, a perspective we all can identify with because we see the world in similar fashion.
There are few poets more intimate than Simic. When looking through his eyes, which have seen and survived much, one can't get closer to one of contemporary poetry's strongest voices.

There are some really beautiful and intriguing poems in here; the kind of writing you will want to read out loud and discuss with friends. I would highly recommend it.

Charles Simic, My Noiseless Entourage (Harcourt, 2005)

Simic continues to astound readers with thin, gorgeous books of poetry every few years. It's been a while, though (this is his first book of completely new work since 1999's Jackstraws), and one has to wonder-- why the six-year gap? Is The man losing a step? Not at all, cholly. My Noiseless Entourage, from its opening words, transports the reader to that same weird and wonderful place that all of Simic's books do. (And, with him having recently garnered a quick mention in a Lemony Snicket book, perhaps his star will be rising to where it rightfully belongs in the near future.)

I had originally started off thinking I was going to quote specific passages from the book in testament to how great it is, but I ended up with so many I just opened the book and random and came across:

"America, I shouted at the radio,
Even at 2AM you are a loony bin!

No, I take it back!
You are a stone angel in the cemetery

Listening to blind geese in the sky
Your eyes blinded by snow."
(--"Talk Radio")

As always, there's not a word out of place, no fat to be trimmed from these wonderful, dadaesque ramblings. It's, perhaps, not quite as powerful as Simic's finest moments (The World Doesn't End or Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk, for example), but you're talking about the difference between a 20 megaton bomb and a 19 megaton bomb; you're still going to come out of the experience having been blown away.

This collection, like all of Simic's others, is truly a work of superb genius. But unlike Simic's previous work, it is a totality of superb genius. By this I mean that there is not one "filler" poem, not one line or moment that he seems to slip -- it is wholly perfection.

Okay, this is a strong opinion, but true to me. This is a work of searching that is so fresh and unique in its undertakings and thoughts that it seems as if he has stumbled upon a new way of searching via poetry. But he hasn't. The eternal search (and whatever form that may take)is not new to any poet, but he has managed to keep the human search for him/herself, the universe, and so forth so very fresh one cannot help but admire and revel in the genius of each poem, each word, tone, sound, line. This collection of Simic will sit comfortably with your other Simic books ... and if this is your first foray into Simic, you will be truly captivated!

This collection seems to be a Charles realizing the answers (or at least the beginning of answers) to questions he has had forever, and thankfully his genius in the art of poetry gives him a way to deliver nuggets of knowledge and answers to all of us. But only nuggets; most of the beauty in these poems (and in a any great poetry) is the holding back.

Read these poems aloud ... and silently ... you'll see what I mean!

Keep 'em coming, Mr. Simic.

Simic's brilliant poetry is provocative, visual, casting thoughts like scattered jewels, begging to be picked up, examined, remembered. The title, My Noiseless Entourage, suggests the nature of this collection, shadowy thoughts that intrude to jostle the memory, like the ghosts of friends and neighbors walking one step behind on a long, winding country road with evening pushing in. These are the subterranean sounds no one acknowledges, but everyone hears, man and beast, the low-timbered groan of voices, shape-shifters seen from the corner of the eye.

In "The Role of Insomnia in History", the personal coexists with the impersonal:

"The mind is a palace
Walled with mirrors.
The mind is a country church,
Overrun with mice."

Thoughts scurry around at will, ever busy, judging, weighing. At the same time, others carry responsibility, those who dwell in the security of power:

"When dawn breaks,
The saints kneel,
The tyrants feed their hounds
Chunks of bloody meat."

Addressing both the mundane and the metaphysical, everything is on the table for consideration: "In the graveyard where he collects the rent/ Or in the night sky/ Where we address our complaints to him." (The Absentee Landlord)

Self-examination is fertile ground when viewing the world, making sense of the ghosts that follow us through the years, the simple pleasures, the missed opportunities:

"All I've ever done
It seems- is go poking
in the ruins with a stick
Until I was covered
With soot and ashes..." (December 21)

The depth of Simic's creativity is inexhaustible, characters plucked from the bustling city, the rural farm, the past, words opening and reconfiguring themselves, settling on the page anew to prick the broken strings of memory: "The sun doesn't care for ambiguities,/ But I do. I open my door and let them in." (Shading Exercise)

Luan Gaines/2005.

Charles Simic is a poet, yes, but he is more than that highest compliment in literary circles. Simic is a visionary because he is in tune with the atoms and microns that float through our atmosphere, either discarded or simply ignored, or worse, never noticed by us, the usual beings. He manages is so few terse words to nudge us into awareness.

'Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.
Some stay up into the wee hours
To search their souls.
Others undress each other in darkened rooms.'

Pause on every page of this physically slim but potent collection of his latest poems and see if you can turn away unchanged. Brilliant poetry from a consistently brilliant poet. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 05

this is the biggest ilustrator of the world,you'l never been disappointing with this book, a great gift for desing artist!

First, I must confess that I am predisposed to enjoying this book. I love everything about the man and his work. Over the past several years I've acquired fourteen volumes of Steinberg's art as well as other printed pieces. Before the internet this would have been almost impossible and very costly. My earliest recollection of art I had strong feelings about goes back to the late 1940's when I saw a series of drawings by Saul Steinberg in The New Yorker.

That being said, this catalog is one of the finest volumes of his work to date. It is a generously sized book at 10 x 12 inches, hardcover and 288 pages. It is printed on a matte coated paper which means the reproductions are excellent. The book is very well thought out. It begins with two illustrated essays. They are followed by the catalogue of the exhibition. This is followed by notes, chronologies and other information which illuminates Mr. Steinberg's career.

It is a very well designed book. The type choices and page formats make it quite easy to actually read. This is not always the case since the advent of computer composition. The catalogue section gives each work of art a two-page spread. The title, pictorial information and a brief commentary are on the left facing page and a reproduction is on the right facing page. The illustrations are large and accurate to the originals. For some art works there are extra illustrations below the commentary on the left facing page.

If you are intrigued about this artist, Saul Steinberg ILLUMINATIONS, is a must for your library. To round out your collection, consider purchasing STEINBERG AT THE NEW YORKER which was recently published and should still be available. If you are interested in seeing the actual exhibition, you should be able to find information online at the Saul Steinberg Foundation website.

This book sums up most of the best work of Saul Steinberg, and for those who like his graphics, an absolute "must have"

The marvelous Saul Steinberg exhibition at the Morgan Library in NYC is almost too much to take in even if one devotes an entire afternoon. Unlike some art exhibitions, Saul Steinberg's work is full of references and verbal ques that make ones brain fire on all cylinders simlutaneously. That can be exhilarating, but also exhausting. Saul Steinberg, the book, allows one to take in the artists's work in smaller bites: indeed, you can dip into the book at any page and be well fed. Don't miss the exhibition. But then, make sure you get the book.

"A writer who draws," that's how Steinberg described himself, and that's what Joel Smith's explores in his great essay on Steinberg's life and art which accompanies the pieces from the ILLUMINATIONS show. If you're looking for Steinberg's New Yorker work, you won't find it here. (Buy the must-have Complete New Yorker on DVD and you'll have everything he ever published there!) But if you're looking for a good place to start on Steinberg, this is the book.

Reading Dime-Store Alchemy is a fine way to get to know Joseph Cornell's work (and of course Charles Simic's). Simic uses a writing style which pieces together different elements of Cornell's favorite authors and poets, beautifully reflecting the montage operation created by Cornell himself. As Simic ambiguously reveals aspects of Cornell's life in New York City, the reader finds him/herself on the same search for an understanding of beauty that the artist spent his entire life investigating. Don't miss it!

Then you will love this book of short essays and responses to Joseph Cornell's work by our Poet Laureate. It's amll and without a dustjacket, quite elegant and easy to take with you to read when you find yourself with a few spare minutes.

This elegant book reminded me of "Einstien's Dreams." The book is about the genius of imagination. Cornell's provincial life gave him the opportunity to observe his world closely and let it expand into his art. The writing by the poet Simic is a piece of art in itself.

I first read poetry of Charles Simic in the New Yorker. He is a great poet and evokes moods with very well-turned phrases and perfectly chosen words. I loved this book and admire this poet to an extent that cannot be put into words.

Charles Simic, Hotel Insomnia (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992)

If I ever meet Charles Simic, I am likely to ask that one question every author really hates: "Where do you get your ideas?"

It's not that the overarching, grand design of Simic's work is incomprehensible or anything. In fact, in Hotel Insomnia, if anything, it's more noticeable than ever; for once, the book's title really does tie into almost everything in the book. Insomnia is a major theme in these poems, and it runs throughout like a bad infomercial on late-night TV in the background, bleary-eyed, beer in hand, in its boxer shorts, and yet strangely appealing.

No, it's not that. It's in the details, those damnable little snippets of poetry that make Charles Simic's poems little gems of wide-eyed brilliance:

"There's a painting over the cash register:
Of a stiff Quaker couple dressed in black.
They hold a cat under each arm.
One is a tiger, the other is Siamese.
The eyes are closed because it's very late,
And because cats see better with their eyes closed."
(--"Caged Fortuneteller")

This is a guy who knows something about you. No matter who you are. And in every book he releases, he will reveal a little of it, until you're paranoid, hiding in a darkened room, peeking out of the blinds, unable to sleep, just waiting for Charles Simic to come knocking on your door, because you're convinced he's coming for you.

And isn't that what it's all about? **** ½

by Brian L. Frye
Robert Flaherty invented ethnographic filmmaking, and Jean Rouch transformed it into sociology. But Robert Gardner made it an art form. If his predecessors created films of practical beauty, Gardner infused his own with an exquisite aesthetic rigor. While documenting life in pre-modern--sometimes nearly primeval--societies, they preserve something of the pleasures peculiar to such a life, sacrificed for the pleasures of modernity.

Over nearly 50 years, Gardner has assembled an eclectic collection of documentaries, notably DEAD BIRDS, on the primitive Dani of Papua New Guinea, RIVERS OF SAND, on the Hamar of southern Ethiopia, and FOREST OF BLISS, on funeral practices in Benares, India. THE IMPULSE TO PRESERVE: REFLECTIONS OF A FILMMAKER compiles journals Gardner kept while making those films and others, as well as essays on his subjects and documentary filmmaking more generally. Copiously illustrated with photographs, stills, and documents, most created by Gardner himself, the book is a pleasure to browse. And Gardner's spare, lucid prose makes it a pleasure to read, too. Not to mention a perfect complement to his occasionally enigmatic movies.

But it's also an elliptical polemic on the ethos of ethnographic filmmaking. Gardner rejects relativism, advocating a kind of aspirational ethnography. "I don't think anthropology is doing its job by being value free. I do think it should accept its responsibility to look for larger truths." And yet his aspirations are less ideological than aesthetic.

Rather than merely catalog human existence, Gardner searches for particular expressions of human genius. "I have always thought populations undergoing change were the business of sociologists and of those anthropologists interested in change for its own sake. My own interests are to look for that which is an apt symbol or sign and, at the same time, is distinctive in and of itself." He finds it in traditions truly born of time immemorial, the remnants of a history as archeological as anthropological.

As Isaiah Berlin explained, in admiring the virtues of classical society we recognize their incompatibility with our own. Gardner admires the mythical world of the Dani, despite its brutal violence, and despises the preening puerility of the Hamar. Unlike his postmodern peers, he realizes refusing to judge a society is the profoundest form of contempt. In judging, he testifies to the fantastic truths only history and experience can reveal.

I think Wade Davis (AUTHOR: Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), Shadows in the Sun (1998) and Light at the Edge of the World (2001)) said it best:

"This book is less a text than a vision, a series of reflections and recollections that come together as a prayer, a cry from the heart of an extraordinary artist and ethnographer who long before anyone else noticed recognised and described the central backdrop of our age. In the year Robert Gardner was born there were 6000 languages spoken on Earth, each a flash of the human spirit, an old growth forest of the mind. Today fully half of these are not being taught to children or whispered into the ears of infants. Within a generation we are, by definition, losing half of humanity's intellectual, social, and spiritual legacy. He saw this unfolding in New Guinea, South Asia, Africa and in the mountains of Colombia, the Kogi heart of the world. He has devoted his life to this tale, inspiring generations of students, firing the heart of scores of young scholars of anthropology. I know this to be true, for I was one of them."

I very much enjoyed Charles Simic's Night Picnic. I have yet to discover a volume of his poems, or essays for that matter, to which I would give less than 4 stars. Although I have given this volume 5 stars, if I could I would have given it 4 ½ stars. This is NOT a minor work, to be sure; however it is not, in my opinion one of Simic's best works. Still, I do highly recommend Night Picnic - the poetry is delightfully engaging and the hardbound volume itself is of a quality rarely found these days.

I do hope you will pick up this volume, but afterward may I suggest you go further and invest in Simic's absolutely mesmerizing volumes: A Wedding In Hell and The World Doesn't End - I have perhaps a dozen volumes of Simic's poetry in my collection and these two are by far my favorites yet. Of course Charles Simic famously was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The World Doesn't End, which you should know is primarily a work of prose poetry.

I love this book but fail to find the right words to describe it. As Simic writes in metaphors I am making a clumpsy attempt to compare this collection to a cup of tea -- subtle aroma with awakening strength; simplicity in forms with depth in meanings. Sympathetic, elusive, hopeful, hopeless, provocative, and more. The writer left ample room for a reader's own perspective. The poems cover a broad range of subjects and the collection is stimulating from beginning to end. Here is just one example: "Light,/Mystic tipster,/You come rarely,/If at all//Down in the hole/To see me kneeling/With a clip-on halo/Waiting for you." The excerpt is telling of the effortlessness in rendition but the weight of thoughts.

Read any book by the touching, spare, philosophical, and simple poet Charles Simic. Read this if you hate poetry. read this if you love poetry. Today most poets are mired in the concrete. Masters of decorative language, they don't seem to have a point. Simic is a must read for poets, and all writers. He mentions his clothes often. This for me represents his respect for the common, the low. yet he tastefully reaches for the ether at the same time. He is one of the best of our century! However his intellect is huge but doesn't bother us with pretentious references to other poems or pseudo-intellectual babbling. He is surreal in a sense of mood. He says a lot with a few words.

Simic's best work somehow manages to be both surrealistic and lucid. Expressionistic black & white takes on the Old Country (E. Europe in the years following the second world war) and the New World (the bustling, booming Chicago Simic emigrated to as a teenager). The poems on silverware alone worth the price of the book. Strange and wonderful.

All too often these days poetry is something like "I am/but I am not/and there is a puzzle/piece/on the wall" and you feel like it should mean something but you're not sure what.

Simon Armitage is different. The imagery is clear and the language he uses is crystalline in its sharpness and exactitude. The verses are structured with a seamless fluidity so that they flow effortlessly, and yet you are aware of how tightly regimented the words are. This is the work of a master poet, and it shows. All of his poems, no matter how short or long, require several readings: the first time, you are only aware of the precision in the cadence and the evocative images he uses; the second, you start to understand the story he's telling (all of his poems are, essentially, stories); third, you are trying to come to terms with the whys and the hows; fourth, you start to grasp the symbolism and the meaning.

And the strange thing--it never gets old. You read the poems once, twice, ten, fifty times, and each time there is something to marvel at. It's like an old Beatels' LP--you know all the songs on there by heart, you know every note, and yet when you listen to it yet again, there's always something more.

The Shout is a compilation of poems from past works by Armitage. The very readable poems in the book, both traditional and experimental, encompass a world of subject matter. I don't usually read much poetry, preferring fiction, but after stumbling on this collection I might start.

The poems freshly explore both the banal and the transcendent with wry humor, authenticity, lyricism and originality.

Darkly humorous "Gooseberry Season" tells the story of an annoyed family calmly murdering an unwelcome houseguest. The elegant, melancholic "To His Lost Lover" is a man's reflection on the experiences he never had in a relationship, regretting "how they never slept like buried cutlery," and he "never drank intoxicating liquors from her navel/ Or christened the Pole Star in her name." "You're Beautiful" is one of my favorites, which you can find online with some searching. Order this book!

Albahari's work is and will be a complex simplicity, a work wich will always make you think about the words: the power of words. Most of his work has not been translated yet. I hope that somebody will start doing it. If not, I will not be surprised, if Albahari will start to write in English - in that way the Ballkan will have the first Joseph Conrad! His stories are awesome, you will have a feeling that you are reading through a microscope, you will reveal thinks that you see but that you never percieved them before, you will start to be possesed by inner ideas how life is such a complex world (especially in Ballkan (sic!)), and with all it's tragic ingredients how terrible can it be when nationalism, hate and historical revenege starts to rise and to controll you ... If the Second WW was over the memories still remain.Albahari writes about it. He writes through his father or mother. But, what shall Albahari do now when the civil war in Yugoslavia destroyed the whole new generations! He still writes about his father and mother: the history will be rewinded again! There will be nothing new! The time in Ballkan doesen't exist, and if it does , then it exist differently. Serbs & Croats, Serbs & Muslims, Muslims& Croats, Serbs & Albanians ...they will slaughter each other and there will be nothing new under the Sun ... except the family saga of one Jewish family.

the mystery of the word, the tricks of the mind, the lunacy of the everyday is the stuff of Europe's master short short story writer. this is the first translation of david albahari's work into English. he has published 10 collections of short stories and novellas to date and is considered one of the prime writers from the former Yugoslavia. He currently lives in Calgary, Canada, where he came from Belgrade to be Markin-Flanagan distinguished writer in residence in 1995. Of Jewish background, albahari is concerned with the depth and shallowness of human identity and the role that chance plays in survival. with a dark sense of humour and a light sense of tragedy he captures the pain of 20th century existence