Sep 14, 16* Also on my blog.

We were fabulously lucky.We became dandelions.Before we were even bornWe kept wishing to be dandelions.Next we found ourselves travelingOut of the great unknown.We rode down in a trainSixteen coaches long,We sat prim and properIn our golden yellow dresses.Others came as black widows,Little monkeys, and red birds,And of course many ants,Snuggled together and looking glum. — — —I was a winter fly on the ceiling In the house of arachnids.Silence reigned. Queen InsomniaSipped tea in the parlour,Dea...

And that's why he is one of the best poets writing today:WARThe trembling finger of a womanGoes down the list of casualtiesOn the evening of the first snow.The house is cold and the list is long.All our names are included.

Hotel Insomnia is a collection of poems by the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Charles Simic.Since this was my first time reading the works of Simic, I did not know what to expect. However, I definitely had a good feeling about this book because of its mysterious and catchy title.Upon setting my eyes on the first stanza of the first poem, I knew that this book would be a keeper. Simic's unique prose and use of dark yet alluring imagery easily drew me into the stanzas and lines, drinking in the words...

My theory that magical things happen when one meanders through the NF section at the library remains intact! For that is what I was doing when I found Hotel Insomnia. Whilst browsing the poetry section, I was attracted to its title first, then I picked it up, flipped through it, decided it had great potential to be something I'd like, and took it home.As I said, I liked the title first of all; it conjured certain pictures and expectations in my mind that I'd say Charles Siric captured quite well...

Favorites: Obscure Beginnings "The window a theater of cruelty, With its view of the pretty meadow:Sheep nibbling wildflowers..."Miss Nostradamus"Overcoats thrown over their pajamas, the lovers of tragedies now stand in ecstasy, there where a naked babe is being thrown out of a high window by a woman in flames."Folk Songs"Sausage-makers of History,The bloody kind,You all hail from a villageWhere the dog barking at the moonIs the only poet."To Think Clearly"Don't go admiring yourselfIn the butche...

More of the "To Read" List clean up: I spent a month of more with this Simic collection in 2009, and it's impressions are still strong, despite the loss of details. This was my first Simic, and it sent me quickly to others. This collection especially dwells in the penumbra of half-light just outside the street light's glow, full of almost-truths and near-certainties.

Oh dear. I kept myself a little bit more sleep-deprived than usual before digging in because I heard that that's the best way to get with this collection of poems. Unfortunately I like them a lot less than I had wanted to; and I certainly did not like them enough to give it a 3-star rating. I simply can't do it even though a 2-star rating feels a bit stingy. I'm a fan of Simic, but this one was more of a 'miss' than a 'hit' for me. Half a dozen poems from this collection that I actually thought

Amazing poetry collection. Simic is the master of magic realism in poetry.

I believe Simic is one of the most talented poets of our day. Haunting and timely. Keeps the reader present and mindful, yet aside and looking in. Greta work.

Hotel InsomniaCharles SimicI liked my little hole,Its window facing a brick wall.Next door there was a piano.A few evenings a montha crippled old man came to play"My Blue Heaven."Mostly, though, it was quiet.Each room with its spider in heavy overcoatCatching his fly with a webOf cigarette smoke and revery.So dark,I could not see my face in the shaving mirror.At 5 A.M. the sound of bare feet upstairs.The "Gypsy" fortuneteller,Whose storefront is on the corner,Going to pee after a night of love.O...

I like my poetry like I like my men, intelligent and suicidal.

Having read about half a dozen or so of the author's books before getting to this one, it was little surprise that this book would deal so heavily in one of the topics that is characteristic of his literature and mine [1], namely, insomnia and what keeps one from sleeping well.  One hesitates to speculate exactly on what is keeping the author from sleeping well here or in many of his other volumes of similarly dark and melancholy poetry, but it is no surprise given the material of this poem that...

Frankly, Simic already had me hooked into this book by the time I'd finished reading the title. What I found inside did not disappoint. More than a lengthy and doubtless presumptuous analysis, a couple of quotes might suffice to explain why. The title poem, Hotel Insomnia, starts with:I liked my little hole,Its window facing a brick wall.Next door there was a piano.A few evenings a monthA crippled old man came to play“My Blue Heaven.”And from the ending of Romantic Sonnet:Happiness, you are the

Un intero firmamento 💜

So I read this book in one day. And my thoughts are... Well, I do not have that much to say about this book. It was just completely weird, and I love weird. Weird is great, and it is the new normal. This book consists of dark poems, and they were pretty disturbing. There were a lot of symbolism that associated with the color black. At first I did not really get the point, but as I kept reading, I kind of understand the poems a little better as I read along. I do recommend this book to anybody wh...

Sleeplessness is like a metaphysics.Be there. “The Congress of the Insomniacs”A gripping title for a collection best read in the dead of night or in the early hours of the morning, when darkness and silence, occasionally crossed by muffled sounds, give way to magic.Simic’s Nocturnes merge the ordinary with surreal and lofty visions of angels, labyrinthine corridors, prisons within prisons, funeral homes. He breathes life into inanimate objects and recollects fleeting scenes from the Old world o...

To be read only after midnight. What a delight.

Loved this collection!

These weren't exactly for me. The atmosphere i got when I could wasn't one that I enjoyed being in, and the flashes that I did love were in poems that felt half started and half finished. I couldn't tell if these were dreams, diatribes, Simic, no one, a story, a collection, a gathering or if there were themes.I'm really a sucker, because for as much as I didn't like these, I'm going to go read his other works and hope they are different- based on the power of the most incredible poem titles. The...