In this book Charles Simic is both maestro and ethnographer of one surreal geography after another alongside moments of the personal, sublime quotidian. The overall gesture of the book seems one as comfortable with the absurd as well as the pastoral, Simic constantly limning both everyday moments and nightmares at constant risk of becoming hilarious. While never quite cynical, the speaker of these poems feels slightly haggard with experience and knowing, a speaker that's been around the block a

Philosophy is for the young. Poetry is for the aged. I said that.4 1/2Well, for anyone who didn't catch the Dylan references (including the three words above) ... Not so far-fetched now, okay? And who was being complimented most? Maybe it was Charles, ...Charles Simic. Pulitzer Prize winner, twice a finalist for the award. US Poet Laureate 2007-2008. MacArthur fellow. And so on. Serbian-American b. 1938. Six years older than I.... not Bob.Bob Dylan. Nobel Prize winner (2016), eleven Grammy Aw

I'm not sure I like him—this voice in his poems. But then again, I certainly don't dislike him—I've read three of his books. I'm sure I'd read another, if given the chance. It's more like the voice eludes me, and because I keep chasing it, and I want it to be serious, I'll never stop chasing it. I'll never pin it down.Maybe, I am skeptical about the boon he brings back from these corrupt shadows that he unveils and then veils like mirrors. He has so many mirrors: mirrors in a whorehouse, or mirr...

You're wholly anonymous.You believe yourself living incognitoIn the rear of a weed-choked,Rat-infested,Long-vacant seaside villa.A gray gull,Most likely the chief snoopOf a previous unknownSecret government agency,Is tiptoeing around importantly.Aha! At the intersection ofThe Visible-Invisible,Past the lost dog hair,Past the solitary sugar crumb:There! With your pants down.Clutching your mouth in horror.With a shadow of a doubtThe indistinguishable you.

Between one and five a.m. when everyone else in the neighborhood is asleep except the other insomniacs, these poems come alive. Some of them recall nights of dreams so bizarre and intense they qualify as life events. Others resonate on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when my husband and I brew coffee and sit quietly reading. Then, I’m intoxicated by the short, sexy little poems hidden the middle of the volume, celebrating life’s moments of bliss. Some poems that I didn’t initially “get” have later sudd...

Simic's poems are surreal and playful, sublime and prophetic. I loved this collection and was reminded of Dylan, the Beat poets, Beck, Aesop Rock, and a host of my favorite word-salad makers. Singular and well worth checking out. Anxious to read more. Published 20 years ago, but of the moment. This one, one of the last in the collection, could have been written today. A poem for a president...'The Emperor'Wears a pig maskOver his face.Sits in a shopping cart,A red toy trumpet in one hand,A live

These poems are vacuum-packed with darkness. There are rooms "webbed in shadow" and noir films, voices that beckon darkness softly, saying, "Hurry home, dark cloud," and voices full of gladness for it: "Luckily, dark came quickly today." Death is indifferent and stands in every corner, but there are also pockets of humor and space for occasional joys and love poems. Weird everywhere. With lines wrapped this tight, not much slips out or in.

The bearded old man on the cornerThe one drinking out of a brown paper bagThe one who declares himselfThe world’s greatest ventriloquist,We are all his puppets, he saysWhen he chooses to say anything...........The street ventriloquist frightens the songbirds with his ascending voice booming as he reads the ghostly script printed on the sun-struck window, the lost authenticity of man. The empty cardboard box flies across the crowded boulevard, the language of humanity latching on a destitute like...

I haven't felt this uneasy after reading a book as I am now. Am I hallucinating? This is absurd.Or is it? Nothing feels so now, when you've read this. I hope it doesn't stay so for long..(Moses wore a false beard and so did Lincoln.X reproduced the Socratic method ofinterrogation by demonstrating the ceiling's ignorance."They stole the secret of the musical matchbook from me," confided Adam."The world's biggest rooster was going to make me famous," said Eve)~Relaxing in A Madhouse.Surrealism.Tha...

Charles Simic, who says that he wants to write poetry that even garbage men will understand, guides us in Walking the Black Cat through a surreal landscape inhabited by street side ventriloquists, magicians, ghosts, dwarves and monkeys with the grace and aplomb of a 66 year old Yugoslavian ballerina. But if you ask Simic, he’ll deny that the characters in his poems are surreal. Claiming to be a “hard-nosed realist,” he says that he merely eavesdrops on the homeless and the mad to come up with hi...

dear charles simic,i love you. i love your name.i love your hair. i love your trousers.do you even have hair?and do you have a glottal stop?i'll love that, too.

THE FOREST WALK Today we took a long walk in the forest.There we met a couple walkingArm in arm with eyes closed.The forest is a dream you hadWhen you were little, they told us.Then the two of them were gone.Even in the afternoon the narrow pathWas busy with shadows.They had many dark secrets among them,The trees did.Shhhh is all we kept hearing.The leaf we plucked and held in our handsAppeared genuinely frightened.The night threw open its birdcage.The trees pretended to prote

Kind of a bleh collection. Really loved the poem called "Sunset Coloring Book" though. It put the grease in my hair, that's for sure.

“It looks so dark the end of the world may be near.I believe it's going to rain.The birds in the park are silent.Nothing is what it seems to be,Nor are we.There's a tree on our street so bigWe can all hide in its leaves.We won't need any clothes either.I feel as old as a cockroach, you said.In my head, I'm a passenger on a ghost ship.Not even a sigh outdoors now.If a child was left on our doorstep,It must be asleep.Everything is teetering on the edge of everythingWith a polite smile.It's because...

I enjoyed most of these poems, especially the first and last few. The imagery is dark and surreal, but some of the poems were too cerebral for my taste. Most were also missing any sort of music or cadence, which I typically prefer. "Mirrors at 4:00AM" and "Father of Lies" were my favorite.

‘A silent, sunlit corner, empty But for a black cat about to cross,One of its paws raisedAs if trying to feel the cunning threadsBy which its life, too, is being held’- from ‘Meditation in the Gutter’

Simic does not disappoint. I find that I enjoy his writing most often when he is incredibly brief (like in the three line poem “First Day of Summer”) and/or lengthy (like in the three page poem “The Emperor”, my favorite of this collection).

I had heard of Charles Simic, but not previously read any of his poetry collections. I picked up this one, as almost always, from the Nashville Public Library.There is a Hemingway style to Simic's writing, in terms of simple words, short phrases, almost all poems < 1 page. The poems frequently start out with a readily understandable setting, and then swerve into the abstract. Sometimes this works well...other times, not so much. I especially like how many of the poems embrace paradoxes. This pre...

Charles Simic, Walking the Black Cat (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1996)Pulitzer Prizewinning author Charles Simic is to dada what Clayton Eshleman is to surrealism; he's pretty much the sole light keeping it alive in the world of poetry in the present day. Simic, a hardcore imagist, is wonderfully precise in his use of concrete detail, which he then pulls completely out of the realm of reality by juxtaposing things which have no business being next to one another. Walking the Black Cat, a finalis...

Charles Simic is one of my favorite poets. Memory and premonition play a role in many of the poems in this collection. In fact, a longing for happiness is personified in one poem as a woman who can't be identified in a particular picture from childhood. Happiness is elusive, and love is elusive, surreal, dreamlike in many of these poems. There are many eccentric, extraordinary moments in this collection. Simic inspires me....I hope he inspires you too.https://triciabarkernde.com/2016/12/1...