Charles Simic Books

After reading many of Charles Simic's works, I have to say that this book of poems was an easy and inspiring read. I find that reading his work lightens me up even if the content is at times dark. Simic seems to be writing through his darkness in this work and searching for the light at the end of the tunnel. He often uses humor in his darkness as well as obsurdity to reflect on the reality. It's a quick read and they are the kind of poems that you can read over and over again and always learn a deeper insight from them. He is an easy poet to relate to and definitely worth reading.

Of all Simic's books, this is the strongest. All his themes are here: the search for meaning, religious iconography, and his use of ironic contrasting images. This is the book that should have won the Pulitzer (nothing against his "The World Doesn't End"). Imagine a cross between Blake, Neruda, and Issa, and you'll have a good idea of the places this book will take you.

Charles Simic, A Wedding in Hell (Harcourt Brance Jovanovich, 1994)

Simic is as good as it gets, and in A Wedding in Hell he's in top form. Simultaneously irreverent and spiritual, the bulk of the poems in this book center around themes of higher powers and how odd they are when looked at from our perspective. Simic's usual surreal wit is in play throughout, and almost every poem has an unexpected pleasure waiting for the reader at the end. (I'd jotted down quotes to put here, but it was raining yesterday and the paper got smudged. Since I can't read my own writing, just imagine "Prayer" is inserted here.)

Lovely, on a par with Simic's beat work. Highly recommended. ****

Charles Simic and Mark Strand, eds., Another Republic (Ecco Press, 1976)

Simic and Strand, long before being Pulitzer winner and Poet Laureate of the United States respectively, put together this fine anthology of European and South American poets, doing some of the translation work themselves and drawing most of the big names in poetic translation to work with them. The result is a fine, fine piece of work that, despite is present state of obscurity, deserves a great deal of attention.

As with most anthologies one is likely to find, the actual quality of the work therein is variable. Put beside such legendary greats as Czeslaw Milosz are lesser lights like Francis Ponge, whose stuff oftentimes reads more like stuff Pierre Reverdy left on the floor. But some of those lesser lights are very worth reading (Simic's quest to bring the work of Vasko Popa to the American people continues to this day, deservedly). The translations also vary in quality, but far more slightly; the lesser ones have a jarring word here, a transition that needs re-read there. The quality ranges from stellar to slightly-less-than-stellar.

Not all of the seventeen wordsmiths here (most are poets, but a few pieces are excerpts from novels, e.g. the section from Julio Cortazar) are folks whose work I will go well out of my way to find in the near future, but, again as always with anthologies, one can find a number of pearls amongst the swine. In this case, the number of pears is more than high enough to warrant seeking out this now-obscure book. *** ½

Charles Simic, Charon's Cosmology (George Braziller, 1977)
Charles Simic, Austerities (George Braziller, 1982)

These two of Simic's entries in the Braziller poetry series (his last before it shut down in 1978, and his second upon its resurrection) read as two parts of a whole, so it makes some sense to review them together. Charon's Cosmology, nominated for the National Book Award, is the shorter of the two by a few pages. The usual wit, wisdom, and irony to be found in Simic is here in spades, along with some wanderings down various life paths to find new ways of looking at things for the viewer's pleasure.

"...I look at times over his shoulder
At all that whiteness. The snow is falling,
As you'd expect. A drop of ink
Gets buried easily, like a footprint.

I too would get lost but there's his shadows
On the wall, like a perched owl...."
(--"Poem")

Austerities, published five years after Charon's Cosmology, could easily have been parts three through five of the same book. It has all the same strengths, and if it has a weakness it is that every once in a while the irony doesn't come off sounding quite as ironic as it should ("Positively Bucolic," for example, gets downright annoying in places-- as it is supposed to, but that doesn't lessen the annoyance). But when Simic is on, he is very, very on:

"Luckily, we had this Transylvanian waiter,
This ex-police sergeant, ex-dancing school instructor
Regarding whom we were in complete agreement
Since he didn't forget the toothpicks with the bill."
(--"East European Cooking")

Simic well deserves a spot in a canon as time progresses, and these two books will be an integral part of that.

Charon's Cosmology: **** ½
Austerities: ****

Okay, I have to admit, this book is by my old poetry teacher, and she is cool! The poems in this collection are confessional in style. Whether they're autobiographical or not, they sure seem to be, and these are mostly some rather sad tales of difficult relationships.

My favorite poem has her going to work after having some dental work done. Her co-workers assume her boyfriend beat her up, and she's too embarrassed to tell them otherwise. The poem is poignant, funny in a sentimental kind of way, and certainly rings true.

Charles Simic, Nine Poems (Exact Change Press, 1989)

Despite the great disparity in the look of any given book by Exact Change, you can usually tell it's an Exact Change book. Few other micropresses are as consistent in the quality of their output, both from the standpoint of the work inside and the construction outside, as is Exact Change. Nine Poems is no exception, published as a huge orange chapbook, one poem to a page. And this is good Simic, right here; the nine poems involved are all reflections on childhood done in the inimitable Simic style that mixes traces of surrealism, dada, sentimentalism, wry humor, and various other things in small quantities to produce the gems that flow regularly from Mr. Simic's pen.

Long out of print now, I am sure. But well worth the search. ****

Charles Simic, Unending Blues (Harcourt Brace, 1986)

To call Charles Simic a poor man's Clayton Eshleman would probably not be giving Simic his full due. After all, Simic is a Pulitzer Prize winner (1990, for The World Doesn't End), a recipient of a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (Jackstraws), a finalist for the National Book Award (Walking the Black Cat), a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. I mean, the guy's good. Only a purist would find fault with Simic, right?

Probably. And faults to be found with Simic are minor at best, for the most part (the odd "what was he thinking?" line break, etc.). But sometimes, while reading Unending Blues, one of Simic's over-sixty books, it occurred to me that the fundamental premise of what Simic has been trying to do since his first poems were published over forty years ago is one that invites failure. That he succeeds with it as much as he does is astounding.

Simic is a surrealist in many ways (thus my comparing him to Eshleman, by far the foremost American surrealist of the latter half of the twentieth century), but at the same time he has a desire to write accessible, commercially viable work. This is not a bad thing in itself; the quest for commercial viability in poetry, the quest for accessibility, is one of the things that drives many of us. But to combine it with surrealism, one of whose main tropes throughout its existence has been the deliberately obscure? Flirting with disaster, one thinks. The hallmark of the search for accessibility in poetry over the past fifty years has been to provide easy answers to those whose first question upon completing a poem is "but what does it mean?" (and damn the eyes of all English teachers across the world who have led us to believe that what a poem means is the most important thing about it.) It would seem that surrealism, which forces the reader to think, would be anathema. And yet somehow Simic has been pulling it off for decades. And once again, in Unending Blues, he for the most part succeeds. He loses his way every once in a while, but far less than most poets treading such a dangerous path would; the majority of the work here resembles an odd, surrealist T. S. Eliot (in the early years, before Eliot got so wordy) more than it does Billy Collins (or Eshleman).

Unending Blues is not a landmark book. It isn't as mind-numbingly brilliant as Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk, it isn't as commercial as Jackstraws, it doesn't ring with the bell of importance as does White or Walking the Black Cat. But as an intro to Simic, or as a lighter read between two more weighty works, Unending Blues can't be beat. Still in print, which is a tad surprising for a book that in the poetry world was printed in the ice age, and worth picking up. ****

Charles Simic, White (New Rivers Press, 1972)

I have quite quickly become convinced that Charles Simic's books belong on the same short shelf that holds Carruth, Sadoff, Robert Lowell, and a few other American poets. Seems like everything I pick up by the guy is wonderful. This early piece (a collection? A long poem? Can't tell) continues the trend.

It's either a collection of short, untitled pieces (which the acknowledgments section would seem to indicate) or a longer work called "White" with a postscript. Either way, it's classic Simic and well worth the trouble it will take to hunt down. It's more classically surreal than his later works, but with the same tone of understated wit, the same veneration of the odd ins-and-outs of quirky beauty, the same engaging, and distinct, diction.

If you're not yet familiar with the work of Charles Simic, the only reason not to start with this one is that it will take you way too long to find, probably. If you're already an established fan, or stumble across a copy in your local library, by all means give it a read. ****

The book was received in excellent condition. Shipping was fairly quick. I have read many of the poems -- and enjoyed them. Simic is a contemporary master.

Charles Simic, Sixty Poems (Harcourt, 2007)

Whenever I hear there's a new Charles Simic book coming out, I look forward to it with great anticipation; thus, I was somewhat disappointed when I found out that this one is a compilation of poems from his later books (the earliest poems here are from Unending Blues), so I'd already read them all. Still, it's always a pleasure to go back and revisit Charles Simic poems, but if you've read all the recent books, move along, folks, nothing to see here. As a beginner course in Simic, it's useful, but would have been more so had it included poems from his wonderful earlier books (and, for some reason, there's nothing in here from the Pulitzer-winning The World Doesn't End). ***

The first reviewer nails it on the head everything he says is right on.

I love Simic's work. He is the reason I started writing myself. I owe everything to his book "Walking the Black Cat" which is a five star book. But I'm sad to say that his last 4 or 5 books have little to offer.

Charles Simic, That Little Something (Harcourt, 2008)

Charles Simic is stepping down from the post of Poet Laureate a year early because, he says, being Poet Laureate keeps him away from doing what he loves best-- writing poetry. And honestly, as much as I like seeing Simic, unarguably one of America's best living poets, in such a position, anything that gets him to be more prolific is perfectly fine with me.

I have to say that Simic's distraction is noticeable in some of these poems, but really, when Simic brings his A game to the table, he's still matchless:

"The two of us just barely visible,
Ghostlike looking from high up
At the wet cobblestones,
The one pigeon who appeared hurt,
Who wanted to be somewhere else
And did his best to get there,
Limping badly and stopping to rest."
("One Wing of the Museum")

It's getting kind of boring saying "another winner from Charles Simic," but I'll put up with the boredom as long as Simic keeps turning out my favorite books of any given year. Wonderful, as usual. ****

This is a very slight, minor work by Charles Simic and one wonders why he even bothered to publish it. Perhaps he's cashing in on his new poet laureate status- cynical but who can blame him? All the old familiar Simic symbols and metaphors are paraded out but without the depth of some of his earlier books. Also lacking is energy and inventiveness. His style is instantly recognizible and I'm afraid he has become something of a parody of himself. The title is really accurate- This book is Something and it is Little.

I just need to know what people's impressions of "Charon's Cosmology" were....thanks!

Charles Simic, Charon's Cosmology (George Braziller, 1977)
Charles Simic, Austerities (George Braziller, 1982)

These two of Simic's entries in the Braziller poetry series (his last before it shut down in 1978, and his second upon its resurrection) read as two parts of a whole, so it makes some sense to review them together. Charon's Cosmology, nominated for the National Book Award, is the shorter of the two by a few pages. The usual wit, wisdom, and irony to be found in Simic is here in spades, along with some wanderings down various life paths to find new ways of looking at things for the viewer's pleasure.

"...I look at times over his shoulder
At all that whiteness. The snow is falling,
As you'd expect. A drop of ink
Gets buried easily, like a footprint.

I too would get lost but there's his shadows
On the wall, like a perched owl...."
(--"Poem")

Austerities, published five years after Charon's Cosmology, could easily have been parts three through five of the same book. It has all the same strengths, and if it has a weakness it is that every once in a while the irony doesn't come off sounding quite as ironic as it should ("Positively Bucolic," for example, gets downright annoying in places-- as it is supposed to, but that doesn't lessen the annoyance). But when Simic is on, he is very, very on:

"Luckily, we had this Transylvanian waiter,
This ex-police sergeant, ex-dancing school instructor
Regarding whom we were in complete agreement
Since he didn't forget the toothpicks with the bill."
(--"East European Cooking")

Simic well deserves a spot in a canon as time progresses, and these two books will be an integral part of that.

Charon's Cosmology: **** ½
Austerities: ****