Summary
Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best known poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.
Details
- Title Sixty Poems
- Author Charles Simic
- Binding Paperback
- Edition number 1st
- Edition 1
- Pages 112
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Ecco Press, Orlando:
- Date January 7, 2008
- ISBN 9780156035644 / 0156035642
- Weight 0.65 lbs (0.29 kg)
- Dimensions 8 x 5.31 x 0.32 in (20.32 x 13.49 x 0.81 cm)
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 2007035942
- Dewey Decimal Code 811.54
Excerpt
From Unending Blues, 1986
toward nightfall
for Don and Jane
The weight of tragic events
On everyone’s back,
Just as tragedy
In the proper Greek sense
Was thought impossible
To compose in our day.
There were scaffolds,
Makeshift stages,
Puny figures on them,
Like small indistinct animals
Caught in the headlights
Crossing the road way ahead,
In the gray twilight
That went on hesitating
On the verge of a huge
Starless autumn night.
One could’ve been in
The back of an open truck
Hunkering because of
The speed and chill.
One could’ve been walking
With a sidelong glance
At the many troubling shapes
The bare trees made—
Like those about to shriek,
But finding themselves unable
To utter a word now.
One could’ve been in
One of these dying mill towns
Inside a small dim grocery
When the news broke.
One would’ve drawn near the radio
With the one many months pregnant
Who serves there at that hour.
Was there a smell of
Spilled blood in the air,
Or was it that other,
Much finer scent—of fear,
The fear of approaching death
One met on the empty street?
Monsters on movie posters, too,
Prominently displayed.
Then, six factory girls,
Arm in arm, laughing
As if they’ve been drinking.
At the very least, one
Could’ve been one of them:
The one with a mouth
Painted bright red,
Who feels out of sorts,
For no reason, very pale,
And so, excusing herself,
Vanishes where it says:
Rooms for Rent,
And immediately goes to bed,
Fully dressed, only
To lie with eyes open,
Trembling, despite the covers.
It’s just a bad chill,
She keeps telling herself
Not having seen the papers
Which the landlord has the dog
Bring from the front porch.
The old man never learned
To read well, and so
Reads on in that half-whisper,
And in that half-light
Verging on the dark,
About that day’s tragedies
Which supposedly are not
Tragedies in the absence of
Figures endowed with
Classic nobility of soul.
against whatever it is that’s encroaching
Best of all is to be idle,
And especially on a Thursday,
And to sip wine while studying the light:
The way it ages, yellows, turns ashen
And then hesitates forever
On the threshold of the night
That could be bringing the first frost.
It’s good to have a woman around just then,
And two is even better.
Let them whisper to each other
And eye you with a smirk.
Let them roll up their sleeves and unbutton their shirts a bit
As this fine old twilight deserves,
And the small schoolboy
Who has come home to a room almost dark
And now watches wide-eyed
The grown-ups raise their glasses to him,
The giddy-headed, red-haired woman
With eyes tightly shut,
As if she were about to cry or sing.
Compilation copyright © 2007 by Charles Simic
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Media reviews
"[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
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Show Details
Sixty Poems
by Simic, Charles
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- Paperback
- ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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