Sixty Poems

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Sixty Poems Pub. Date: 1/7/2008 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Overview

Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best known poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.

Editorial Reviews

KLIATT

Simic is the Poet Laureate of the United States, and his poetry is accessible to nearly all readers, even those not so comfortable with poetry. He writes about travels to foreign places, and walks in nearby woods: "You give the appearance of listening / To my thoughts, O trees, / Bent over the road I am walking / On a late summer evening / When every one of you is a steep staircase / The night is slowly descending." The poems here have been collected from eight different volumes of his poems, published between 1986 and 2005. Reviewer: Claire Rosser

Library Journal

Not only has Simic recently been appointed the 15th poet laureate of the United States, but he has also received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Academy of American Poets' Wallace Stevens Award. Spanning about 20 years, from Simic's first book, Unending Blues(1986), to his latest, My Noiseless Entourage(2005), this collection represents some of Simic's best-loved poems. A pastiche bringing together disparate elements from Simic's childhood in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to his adulthood in New Hampshire, these haunting poems look at the indifference to spiritual values that characterizes contemporary life. With borrowings from novels, children's books, and other poems, this book is reminiscent of art by Maurice Sendak. Like Sendak, Simic is adept at probing the emotional texture of dark moments. Playful, ironic, eerie, and dreamlike, the poems are accessible, although they have a surrealistic bent. As the poet roots into the unconscious mind, toys talk and ghosts appear, yet, surprisingly, the poems feel grounded because of Simic's eye for the evocative and just-right image. Highly recommended for all libraries.
—Diane Scharper

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780156035644
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date: 1/7/2008
Pages: 108
Sales rank: 619,410
Product dimensions: 5.30 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 0.40 (d)

Meet 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.

Read an 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.

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.

Contents

From Unending Blues, 1986

Toward Nightfall 3

Against Whatever It Is That’s Encroaching 6

From The Book of Gods and Devils, 1990

St. Thomas Aquinas 9

Factory 11

Shelley 12

The Devils 15

The White Room 17

The Big War 19

Paradise 20

In the Library 21

From Hotel Insomnia, 1992

The Prodigal 25

Hotel Insomnia 26

The Tiger 27

A Book Full of Pictures 29

Evening Walk 30

Romantic Sonnet 31

The Old World 32

Country Fair 33

From A Wedding in Hell, 1994

Paradise Motel 37

The Clocks of the Dead 38

Leaves 39

Transport 40

Crazy About Her Shrimp 41

Reading History 42

Empires 44

Mystics 45

Via del Tritone 46

The Secret 47

From Walking the Black Cat, 1996

Mirrors at 4 a.m. 51

Cameo Appearance 52

What the Gypsies Told My Grandmother While She Was Still a Young Girl 53

Little Unwritten Book 54

Slaughterhouse Flies 55

An Address with Exclamation Points 56

Entertaining the Canary 57

Ghosts 58

At the Cookout 60

Club Midnight 62

Pastoral Harpsichord 63

Have You Met Miss Jones? 64

From Jackstraws, 1999

The Soul Has Many Brides 69

Mummy’s Curse 70

The Common Insects of North America 71

The Toy 72

From Night Picnic, 2001

Unmade Beds 79

The One to Worry About 80

Sunday Papers 81

The Altar 82

My Father Attributed Immortality to Waiters 83

The Lives of the Alchemists 84

From The Voice at 3:00 a.m., 2003

Grayheaded Schoolchildren 87

Serving Time 88

Late September 89

From My Noiseless Entourage, 2005

Self-Portrait in Bed 93

To Dreams 94

My Noiseless Entourage 95

Description of a Lost Thing 96

My Turn to Confess 97

In the Planetarium 98

Pigeons at Dawn 99

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