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Sixty Poems
Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best known poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.
- GenresPoetryAmericanLiterature
99 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
19 people are currently reading
333 people want to read
About the author
Charles Simic
256 books472 followersU.S. Poet Laureate, 2007-2008
Dušan Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. Simic’s childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where he graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963.
Simic is the author of more than 30 poetry collections, including The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Jackstraws (1999); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and Scribbled in the Dark (2017). He is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught for over 30 years.
Simic has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His other honors and awards include the Frost Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Prize. He served as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2001. Simic has also been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Dušan Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. Simic’s childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where he graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963.
Simic is the author of more than 30 poetry collections, including The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Jackstraws (1999); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and Scribbled in the Dark (2017). He is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught for over 30 years.
Simic has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His other honors and awards include the Frost Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Prize. He served as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2001. Simic has also been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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January 12, 2015
‘A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,
That’s me, dear reader!’
‘Comedy and tragedy are never far from one another,’ Charles Simic, former US Poet Laureate (2007-2008), says in a recent interview with Granta magazine, wonderfully highlighting the thin balance of bottom-of-a-bottle darkness and glorious brightness that spread forth from each of his finely tuned poems. Born in Belgrade in 1938, Simic carried with him his memories of war-torn Europe when he immigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen, giving him a cutting impression of history that brilliantly glows through his works. Through Simic, we gain a unique view of the world, and one that I am always eager to return to and nestle within. There is something utterly fantastic about his style, which both mocks and moralizes, inspires and silences, but always impresses. Simic weaves through playful stanzas of poetic imagery and startling surrealism to deliver upon the reader the full weight of history and eternity, as well as an uplifting joy as he makes even the most ordinary observations into an extraordinary statement on existence.
While this is a wonderful collection to shake hands and introduce yourself to the great Simic, it is lacking by not including any of his prose poems from his Pulitzer Prize winning The World Doesn't End. Perhaps, for those interested in a ‘best of’, his The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems or New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012 would be a better, fuller introduction. However, not a single poem in these 60 poems is a let-down. His poetry creeps slowly into your soul, and while it wasn’t until revisiting this collection three or four times before he really captured my heart, by the time I realized how fantastic he was his poems had already taken eternal roots in me and now I cannot imagine being without them. Returning to Simic’s poems is like entering the home of a beloved friend, knowing an assortment of friends will be awaiting you in the basement as you sink into a familiar couch in the comforting company of laughter and kinship. These past few months have been dark days in my own personal life, and the comfort of Simic has been a great help; whenever something goes wrong, I tend to find myself reading these poems under the glow of the stars as cigarette smoke dances towards the moon. If you are to read only one poet this entire year, make it Charles Simic.
4.5/5
Perhaps his poetic genius is because Simic (above) is secretly Doctor Strangelove…
The White Room
The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.
They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me--
And then didn't.
Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild
Storytelling. We were
Entering dark houses,
Always more dark houses,
Hushed and abandoned.
There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The fear of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.
The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn't leave her room.
The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,
Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as "perfect."
Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn't it.
Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light--
And the trees waiting for the night.
Grey Headed Schoolchildren
Old men have bad dreams,
So they sleep little.
They walk on bare feet
Without turning on the lights,
Or they stand leaning
On gloomy furniture
Listening to their hearts beat.
The one window across the room
Is black like a blackboard.
Every old man is alone
In this classroom, squinting
At that fine chalk line
That divides being-here
From being-here-no-more.
No matter. It was a glass of water
They were going to get,
But not just yet.
They listen for mice in the walls,
A car passing on the street,
Their dead fathers shuffling past them
On their way to the kitchen.
Or, listen to him read his poetry
That’s me, dear reader!’
‘Comedy and tragedy are never far from one another,’ Charles Simic, former US Poet Laureate (2007-2008), says in a recent interview with Granta magazine, wonderfully highlighting the thin balance of bottom-of-a-bottle darkness and glorious brightness that spread forth from each of his finely tuned poems. Born in Belgrade in 1938, Simic carried with him his memories of war-torn Europe when he immigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen, giving him a cutting impression of history that brilliantly glows through his works. Through Simic, we gain a unique view of the world, and one that I am always eager to return to and nestle within. There is something utterly fantastic about his style, which both mocks and moralizes, inspires and silences, but always impresses. Simic weaves through playful stanzas of poetic imagery and startling surrealism to deliver upon the reader the full weight of history and eternity, as well as an uplifting joy as he makes even the most ordinary observations into an extraordinary statement on existence.
The obvious is difficultCharles Simic has quickly risen in the ranks of my favorite poets during this past summer. And it is no surprise with poems such as this:
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
Club MidnightPoems such as this are the reason I read poetry, are the immensely fulfilling reward for navigating a form of art often neglected and overlooked. Simic has an extraordinary ability to cut right through the heart and touch the soul directly with a style that takes the everyday and illuminates it in surrealistic prose that creates a wonderland out of the most banal of landscapes. His poems are like the fringes of a dream, the ones that reside in your mind all day despite being unable to fully recall them, yet echo like a warning or guidance as you go about your business. It is the sort of imagery that stick with you, holding your most dear emotions hostage to beg you to look deeper.
Are you the sole owner of a seedy nightclub?
Are you its sole customer, sole bartender,
Sole waiter prowling around the empty tables?
Do you put on wee-hour girlie shows
With dead stars of black-and-white films?
Is your office upstairs over the neon lights,
Or down deep in the dank rat cellar?
Are bearded Russian thinkers your silent partners?
Do you have a doorman by the name of Dostoyevsky?
Is Fu Manchu coming tonight?
Is Miss Emily Dickinson?
Do you happen to have an immortal soul?
Do you have a sneaky suspicion that you have none?
Is that why you throw a white pair of dice,
In the dark, long after the joint closes?
Evening WalkI cannot ever escape those final lines.
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 high leaves like my mother's lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there's a bit of wind,
And it's like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge dark mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.
Everything quiet. Light
Of some other evening strolling ahead,
Long-ago evening of silk dresses,
Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling.
Happy heart, what heavy steps you take
As you follow after them in the shadows.
The sky at the road's end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.
In my book of picturesThe burdens of history, the violence and bloodshed we impose upon our fellow man, and the sorrows we feel because of them, weigh heavy in Simic’s poetry. There are many poems about the horrors seen as a young boy during World War II, many reflections on executed men and the body count across time gleaned through history books, and an ever-present reminder that we are temporary in the timeline of eternity.
A battle raged: lances with swords Made a kind of wintry forest With my heart spiked and bleeding in its branches
I accuse History of gluttony;Simic has a fascinating way of tying food into his works, particularly in the way he juxtaposes it not only with war, but primarily with sex. In Simic’s poetry, food is as much of a satisfaction as sex, being someone coming from the poverty and hardships of a country afire with war, and simply because it is a simple human necessity and satisfaction. It is a symbol of being alive and taking in energy, instead of having it burned up and snuffed out as history eats us. ‘ If I make everything at the same time a joke and a serious matter,’ he writes, ‘it's because I honor the eternal conflict between life and art, the absolute and the relative, the brain and the belly.’ He makes the most ordinary objects extraordinary, he gives simple acts like eating sexual power, and creates gods out of mere mortals. Sex plays a large part of his works as well, often seen as a temporary reprieve from the darkness of the world.
Happiness of anorexia!
O History, cruel and mystical,
You ate Russia as if it were
A pot of white beans cooked with
Sausage, smoked ribs and ham hocks!
Unmade BedsDuring sex, be it love or, as I suspect in this poem, lust (with an impression that this is an affair), all the pain, darkness and impurities of the world are washed away in the light of passion, and even those on a grimy trip of an affair from their spouses feel bathed in a light of goodness and serenity. Simic has an affinity for poems about dark rooms and grainy films, and there are a few poems of hotels and dirty mirrors that sometime remind me of Borges.
They like shady rooms,
Peeling wallpaper,
Cracks on the ceiling,
Flies on the pillow.
If you are tempted to lie down,
Don’t be surprised,
You won’t mind the dirty sheets,
The rasp of rusty springs
As you make yourself comfy.
The room is a darkened movie theater
Where a grainy,
Black-and-white film is being shown.
A blur of disrobed bodies
In the moment of sweet indolence
That follows lovemaking,
When the meanest of hearts
Comes to believe
Happiness can last forever.
Mirrors at 4am
You must come to them sideways
In rooms webbed in shadow,
Sneak a view of their emptiness
Without them catching
A glimpse of you in return.
The secret is,
Even the empty bed is a burden to them,
A pretense.
They are more themselves keeping
The company of a blank wall,
The company of time and eternity
Which, begging your pardon,
Cast no image
As they admire themselves in the mirror,
While you stand to the side
Pulling a hanky out
To wipe your brow surreptitiously.
While this is a wonderful collection to shake hands and introduce yourself to the great Simic, it is lacking by not including any of his prose poems from his Pulitzer Prize winning The World Doesn't End. Perhaps, for those interested in a ‘best of’, his The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems or New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012 would be a better, fuller introduction. However, not a single poem in these 60 poems is a let-down. His poetry creeps slowly into your soul, and while it wasn’t until revisiting this collection three or four times before he really captured my heart, by the time I realized how fantastic he was his poems had already taken eternal roots in me and now I cannot imagine being without them. Returning to Simic’s poems is like entering the home of a beloved friend, knowing an assortment of friends will be awaiting you in the basement as you sink into a familiar couch in the comforting company of laughter and kinship. These past few months have been dark days in my own personal life, and the comfort of Simic has been a great help; whenever something goes wrong, I tend to find myself reading these poems under the glow of the stars as cigarette smoke dances towards the moon. If you are to read only one poet this entire year, make it Charles Simic.
4.5/5
Perhaps his poetic genius is because Simic (above) is secretly Doctor Strangelove…
The White Room
The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.
They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me--
And then didn't.
Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild
Storytelling. We were
Entering dark houses,
Always more dark houses,
Hushed and abandoned.
There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The fear of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.
The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn't leave her room.
The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,
Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as "perfect."
Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn't it.
Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light--
And the trees waiting for the night.
Grey Headed Schoolchildren
Old men have bad dreams,
So they sleep little.
They walk on bare feet
Without turning on the lights,
Or they stand leaning
On gloomy furniture
Listening to their hearts beat.
The one window across the room
Is black like a blackboard.
Every old man is alone
In this classroom, squinting
At that fine chalk line
That divides being-here
From being-here-no-more.
No matter. It was a glass of water
They were going to get,
But not just yet.
They listen for mice in the walls,
A car passing on the street,
Their dead fathers shuffling past them
On their way to the kitchen.
Or, listen to him read his poetry
February 6, 2020
3.5 stars
An interesting selection of Simic’s best poems. Imaginative, often surreal or sarcastic, socially and politically engaged. I can’t say I enjoyed all of them, but there’s definitely lots of food for thought and images and scenes to return to.
***
Dear spectres, I don’t even believe
You are here, so how is it
You’re making me comprehend
Things I would rather not know yet?
(from Ghosts)
An interesting selection of Simic’s best poems. Imaginative, often surreal or sarcastic, socially and politically engaged. I can’t say I enjoyed all of them, but there’s definitely lots of food for thought and images and scenes to return to.
***
Dear spectres, I don’t even believe
You are here, so how is it
You’re making me comprehend
Things I would rather not know yet?
(from Ghosts)
May 31, 2016
IN THE LIBRARY
for Octavio
There's a book called
A Dictionary of Angels.
No one had opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered
The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.
Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.
She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.
for Octavio
There's a book called
A Dictionary of Angels.
No one had opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered
The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.
Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.
She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.
November 26, 2018
Rocky was a regular guy, a loyal friend.
The trouble was he was only a cat.
He was black except for the white gloves he wore.
He played the piano in the parlor
By walking over its keys back and forth.
The trouble was he was only a cat.
He was black except for the white gloves he wore.
He played the piano in the parlor
By walking over its keys back and forth.
April 23, 2009
Dear specters, I don't even believe
You are here, so how is it
You're making me comprehend
Things I would rather not know just yet?
-Charles Simic, "Ghosts"
You are here, so how is it
You're making me comprehend
Things I would rather not know just yet?
-Charles Simic, "Ghosts"
September 28, 2022
sixty poems! as advertised!
October 13, 2018
This book is a way better book than its title would suggest, and way more coherent as well. As far as reasons for the existence of this best-of collection [1], this book has a worthwhile one, in that it is a collection of poems that was made out of several of the author's other books of poetry after he was chosen as the poet laureate of the United States. This is not a bad reason to make a book. In fact, it is a good reason to make a compilation of poetry, because poetry in general seems to be seldom read and any time one has a reason to market poetry and encourage those who are readers of poetry to read yet another book on poetry, that is a good reason to make a book. As a contemporary poet myself, albeit nowhere near as famous as the author, I can totally understand the appeal of having any reason that would allow for one to come out with a book that would have at least some chance of being read by a wider public. This book does not need to justify its existence to me, at least.
The titular sixty poems of this particular compilation are chosen from nearly two decades worth of the author's writings. The first two poems are taken from 1986's Unending Blues, the next few poems are taken from 1990's The Book Of Gods And Devils, the next few poems after that from 1992's Hotel Insomnia, and the next few after that from 1994's A Wedding And Hell (review forthcoming). A sizable collection follows from 1996's Walking The Black Cat, after which there comes four poems from 1999's Jackstraws, six poems from 2001's Night Picnic, three poems from 2003's The Voice At 3:00AM, and the last seven poems from 2005's My Noiseless Entourage. Despite the long gap between the beginning and end of this collection, though, the poems are a cohesive lot, dealing with conversations, fairly melancholy and gloomy reflections about death and divine judgment, as well as reading. It must be admitted that there are some really good poems here too. My favorite is perhaps the darkly humorous (and somewhat lecherous) "Have You Met Miss Jones," but there are many standouts here depending on whether you like reading about insects or leaves or simply being an insomniac. As is often the case with Simic's writings, there are a lot of ways to enjoy this poem, but most of them are at best darkly humorous.
Like many poets, Simic has a lane that he feels most comfortable in. By the time he had written these poems, he was already between fifty and seventy years old, and he knew his lane and was comfortable exploring it. That does not mean that these poems are necessarily timeless--they certainly have a certain contemporary decadence about them that would be ill-suited to earlier ages where poetry was better respected and written with a higher moral tone. Simic writes throughout the entire collection as if he is haunted by the reality of time and death and divine judgment but also somewhat enraptured by sensual pleasures, and that is not a particularly uncommon place to be. Perhaps one of the reasons why Simic was chosen to be poet laureate, aside from the fact that he is an excellent poet, is the fact that he writes about things that are very easily to relate to by those people who read and enjoy poems. Sensuality and melancholy are very easy approaches to writing to sell in this and probably most ages, and they give this collection a strong coherence.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
The titular sixty poems of this particular compilation are chosen from nearly two decades worth of the author's writings. The first two poems are taken from 1986's Unending Blues, the next few poems are taken from 1990's The Book Of Gods And Devils, the next few poems after that from 1992's Hotel Insomnia, and the next few after that from 1994's A Wedding And Hell (review forthcoming). A sizable collection follows from 1996's Walking The Black Cat, after which there comes four poems from 1999's Jackstraws, six poems from 2001's Night Picnic, three poems from 2003's The Voice At 3:00AM, and the last seven poems from 2005's My Noiseless Entourage. Despite the long gap between the beginning and end of this collection, though, the poems are a cohesive lot, dealing with conversations, fairly melancholy and gloomy reflections about death and divine judgment, as well as reading. It must be admitted that there are some really good poems here too. My favorite is perhaps the darkly humorous (and somewhat lecherous) "Have You Met Miss Jones," but there are many standouts here depending on whether you like reading about insects or leaves or simply being an insomniac. As is often the case with Simic's writings, there are a lot of ways to enjoy this poem, but most of them are at best darkly humorous.
Like many poets, Simic has a lane that he feels most comfortable in. By the time he had written these poems, he was already between fifty and seventy years old, and he knew his lane and was comfortable exploring it. That does not mean that these poems are necessarily timeless--they certainly have a certain contemporary decadence about them that would be ill-suited to earlier ages where poetry was better respected and written with a higher moral tone. Simic writes throughout the entire collection as if he is haunted by the reality of time and death and divine judgment but also somewhat enraptured by sensual pleasures, and that is not a particularly uncommon place to be. Perhaps one of the reasons why Simic was chosen to be poet laureate, aside from the fact that he is an excellent poet, is the fact that he writes about things that are very easily to relate to by those people who read and enjoy poems. Sensuality and melancholy are very easy approaches to writing to sell in this and probably most ages, and they give this collection a strong coherence.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
October 13, 2018
Charles Simic's poetry is one that I never tire of, and can always find something to appreciate.
July 15, 2009
i think when i am disappointed by simic (which happens!) it's because i want him to be more like raoul, which i realize is ridiculous cuz then what would raoul be? but yknow. i think i liked best the poems in this from hotel insomnia (total there are excerpts from i think 9 books), which i don't have: to-read!
i like him best when he's blood, fear, darkness, awkward & quiet physicality. the people very small but viewed so close, shapes rendered sweetly/sadly tragicomic, shades more-or-less real than real, seeming split from their bodies more & more as the limit of body's made apparent, the laughing factory girl w/ bright red lipstick lying shaking in bed -- said in an email simic's good paired w/ "the strange disembodied feeling that sensing my self as a body brings me. which is strange. that when i can feel the surface of my skin most clearly, most inevitably, i feel so apart from it. uninvolved & apart & distinct, but bound." -- & that not only the people? brick, mirrors, knives, light/shadow, ashtrays, houses, trees, rats ("The simplest things, / Difficult in their obviousness"), even literary references sad & plain, direct. i know i always say rilke, & i still want to say rilke (<3 rilke!)? but w/ rilke it seems that things can't be what they are, or can't be penetrated as what they are, or, well, the binding isn't so tight, is i think the thing --- whereas w/ simic there's this infinite expansion not outward but inward. how small the pieces break down.
& of course the poem i type up here has nothing to do w/ any of that but o well!
Evening Walk
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 high leaves like my mother's lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there's a bit of wind,
And it's like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge dark mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.
Everything quiet. Light
Of some other evening strolling ahead,
Long-ago evening of silk dresses,
Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling.
Happy heart, what heavy steps you take
As you follow after them in the shadows.
The sky at the road's end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.
i like him best when he's blood, fear, darkness, awkward & quiet physicality. the people very small but viewed so close, shapes rendered sweetly/sadly tragicomic, shades more-or-less real than real, seeming split from their bodies more & more as the limit of body's made apparent, the laughing factory girl w/ bright red lipstick lying shaking in bed -- said in an email simic's good paired w/ "the strange disembodied feeling that sensing my self as a body brings me. which is strange. that when i can feel the surface of my skin most clearly, most inevitably, i feel so apart from it. uninvolved & apart & distinct, but bound." -- & that not only the people? brick, mirrors, knives, light/shadow, ashtrays, houses, trees, rats ("The simplest things, / Difficult in their obviousness"), even literary references sad & plain, direct. i know i always say rilke, & i still want to say rilke (<3 rilke!)? but w/ rilke it seems that things can't be what they are, or can't be penetrated as what they are, or, well, the binding isn't so tight, is i think the thing --- whereas w/ simic there's this infinite expansion not outward but inward. how small the pieces break down.
& of course the poem i type up here has nothing to do w/ any of that but o well!
Evening Walk
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 high leaves like my mother's lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there's a bit of wind,
And it's like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge dark mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.
Everything quiet. Light
Of some other evening strolling ahead,
Long-ago evening of silk dresses,
Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling.
Happy heart, what heavy steps you take
As you follow after them in the shadows.
The sky at the road's end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.
October 4, 2016
Inspired by Simic's essay about the dream-like reality he inhabits when suffering insomnia, I was curious to see how this would translate into poetry, about which I have little feeling and even less knowledge. I read and re-read this book collection back in July, and I’d meant to write an account at that time, but it’s now six months later, and I’ve got next to no recollection of any single poem, only a general sense that it was all readable, even comprehensible in the way that poetry is, usually not speaking directly at something, but sneaking up around it, full of allusion, distortion, flights of fancy, and contorted language.
In grabbing up the book to rekindle some recollections, I hit unfortunately on one of the few poems that I recall groaning at, Mummy’s Curse, which ends with the mummy on a bicycle delivering pizzas. That one didn’t work, and it was painful to contemplate that Simic would have thought it did. There are four other poems from the same 1999 collection (Jackstraws), and they all too heavily rely on surreal imagery. More appealing to me are the poems that ground themselves in more quotidian specifics, such as The Altar, which after a litany of doodads adorning a dresser, ends with
An altar dignifying the god of chance.
What is beautiful, it cautions,
Is found accidentally and not sought after.
What is beautiful is easily lost.
There is an appeal to a half-seen world in his poems which he best summons when the language is itself sedate; then the oddness and peculiarity of the commonplace has opportunity to flash momentarily before almost glazed eyes.
I do think Simic’s insomniacal habits give him access to an evanescent view of the world, and that he renders it generally well. Though ephemeral, there are startling shivers in his poetry. It’s a solid, moral poetry too, which is perhaps beside the point, but I do like signs that a man knows how it is that one must get on with others.
In grabbing up the book to rekindle some recollections, I hit unfortunately on one of the few poems that I recall groaning at, Mummy’s Curse, which ends with the mummy on a bicycle delivering pizzas. That one didn’t work, and it was painful to contemplate that Simic would have thought it did. There are four other poems from the same 1999 collection (Jackstraws), and they all too heavily rely on surreal imagery. More appealing to me are the poems that ground themselves in more quotidian specifics, such as The Altar, which after a litany of doodads adorning a dresser, ends with
An altar dignifying the god of chance.
What is beautiful, it cautions,
Is found accidentally and not sought after.
What is beautiful is easily lost.
There is an appeal to a half-seen world in his poems which he best summons when the language is itself sedate; then the oddness and peculiarity of the commonplace has opportunity to flash momentarily before almost glazed eyes.
I do think Simic’s insomniacal habits give him access to an evanescent view of the world, and that he renders it generally well. Though ephemeral, there are startling shivers in his poetry. It’s a solid, moral poetry too, which is perhaps beside the point, but I do like signs that a man knows how it is that one must get on with others.
January 10, 2010
Six Half-Articulated Notes While Reading Sixty Poems by Charles Simic:
1) A progression/development in the short selections from nine selections.
2) Simic's induction into the Literary Hall of Fame known as Poet Laureate has no doubt placed him on the collapsing chair above a tank of water (and a long, eager line wants a shot!).
3) One weakness is an impulse to conclude the earliest selections in Sixty Poems with an exaggerated flourish.
4) A number of statements structured: "[Noun:] is..." (over-reliance on the verb "to be").
5) Penchant for metaphor.
6) Tendency to present women as objects of sex and/or providers of food.
1) A progression/development in the short selections from nine selections.
2) Simic's induction into the Literary Hall of Fame known as Poet Laureate has no doubt placed him on the collapsing chair above a tank of water (and a long, eager line wants a shot!).
3) One weakness is an impulse to conclude the earliest selections in Sixty Poems with an exaggerated flourish.
4) A number of statements structured: "[Noun:] is..." (over-reliance on the verb "to be").
5) Penchant for metaphor.
6) Tendency to present women as objects of sex and/or providers of food.
October 21, 2014
The world informs me,
like a distracted conductor
too busy to answer my question
if this is the right stop,
that this isn't
the book of his I should read.
'This is what they had,' I say.
Before I can explain
how I liked it
but didn't love it,
They turn their back,
and I'm left to ponder the rail map.
I'd have liked to tell
of the pockets of verse
stuffed into spare corners
that thrilled me like little else
but that I tired of
vast dusty plains of women and food.
Much like Spain.
But he had already moved on,
hassling some lady about change,
she looking like she was about to cry.
like a distracted conductor
too busy to answer my question
if this is the right stop,
that this isn't
the book of his I should read.
'This is what they had,' I say.
Before I can explain
how I liked it
but didn't love it,
They turn their back,
and I'm left to ponder the rail map.
I'd have liked to tell
of the pockets of verse
stuffed into spare corners
that thrilled me like little else
but that I tired of
vast dusty plains of women and food.
Much like Spain.
But he had already moved on,
hassling some lady about change,
she looking like she was about to cry.
February 4, 2018
Love Simic's imaginative, economical prose. My favorites here were his poems from the Hotel Insomnia collection. He is able to confront the dark parts of childhood without becoming completely maudlin.
January 25, 2014
My four-star rating is based mostly on my love for this phrase: "I believe in the soul. So far, / it hasn't made much difference."
January 20, 2022
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.
* * *
I liked my little hole,
Its window facing a brick wall.
Next door there was a piano.
A few evenings a month
a crippled old man came to play
"My Blue Heaven."
Mostly, though, it was quiet.
Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat
Catching his fly with a web
Of 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.
Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.
So near it was, I thought
For a moment, I was sobbing myself.
* * *
In the frying pan
On the stove
I found my love
And me naked.
Chopped onions
Fell on our heads
And made us cry.
It's like a parade,
I told her, confetti
When some guy
Reaches the moon.
"Means of transport,"
She replied obscurely
While we fried.
"Means of transport!"
* * *
Yellow feathers,
Is it true
You chirp to the cop
On the beat?
Desist. Turn your
Nervous gaze
At the open bathroom door
Where I'm soaping
My love's back
And putting my chin on her shoulder
So I can do the same for her
Breasts and crotch.
Sing. Flutter your wings
As if you were applauding,
Or I'll throw her black slip
Over your gilded cage.
* * *
They like shady rooms,
Peeling wallpaper,
Cracks on the ceiling,
Flies on the pillow.
If you are tempted to lie down,
Don't be surprised,
You won't mind the dirty sheets,
The rasp of rusty springs
As you make yourself comfy.
The room is a darkened movie theatre
Where a grainy,
Black-and-white film is being shown.
A blur of disrobed bodies
In the moment of sweet indolence
That follows lovemaking,
When the meanest of hearts
Comes to believe
Happiness can last forever.
* * *
It never had a name,
Nor do I remember how I found it.
I carried it in my pocket
Like a lost button
Except it wasn't a button.
Horror movies,
All-night cafeterias,
Dark barrooms
And pool halls,
On rain-slicked streets.
It led a quiet, unremarkable existence
Like a shadow in a dream,
An angel on a pin,
And then it vanished.
The years passed with their row
Of nameless stations,
Till somebody told me this is it!
And fool that I was,
I got off on an empty platform
Wit no town in sight.
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.
- Against Whatever It Is That’s Encroaching, pg. 6
* * *
I liked my little hole,
Its window facing a brick wall.
Next door there was a piano.
A few evenings a month
a crippled old man came to play
"My Blue Heaven."
Mostly, though, it was quiet.
Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat
Catching his fly with a web
Of 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.
Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.
So near it was, I thought
For a moment, I was sobbing myself.
- Hotel Insomnia, pg. 26
* * *
In the frying pan
On the stove
I found my love
And me naked.
Chopped onions
Fell on our heads
And made us cry.
It's like a parade,
I told her, confetti
When some guy
Reaches the moon.
"Means of transport,"
She replied obscurely
While we fried.
"Means of transport!"
- Transport, pg. 40
* * *
Yellow feathers,
Is it true
You chirp to the cop
On the beat?
Desist. Turn your
Nervous gaze
At the open bathroom door
Where I'm soaping
My love's back
And putting my chin on her shoulder
So I can do the same for her
Breasts and crotch.
Sing. Flutter your wings
As if you were applauding,
Or I'll throw her black slip
Over your gilded cage.
- Entertaining the Canary, pg. 57
* * *
They like shady rooms,
Peeling wallpaper,
Cracks on the ceiling,
Flies on the pillow.
If you are tempted to lie down,
Don't be surprised,
You won't mind the dirty sheets,
The rasp of rusty springs
As you make yourself comfy.
The room is a darkened movie theatre
Where a grainy,
Black-and-white film is being shown.
A blur of disrobed bodies
In the moment of sweet indolence
That follows lovemaking,
When the meanest of hearts
Comes to believe
Happiness can last forever.
- Unmade Beds, pg. 79
* * *
It never had a name,
Nor do I remember how I found it.
I carried it in my pocket
Like a lost button
Except it wasn't a button.
Horror movies,
All-night cafeterias,
Dark barrooms
And pool halls,
On rain-slicked streets.
It led a quiet, unremarkable existence
Like a shadow in a dream,
An angel on a pin,
And then it vanished.
The years passed with their row
Of nameless stations,
Till somebody told me this is it!
And fool that I was,
I got off on an empty platform
Wit no town in sight.
- Description of a Lost Thing, pg. 96
December 3, 2025
Sixty Poems is a collection of Simic's poetry from 1986, when he published Unending Blues, up through 2005, the year of his collection My Noiseless Entourage. It is truly a journey, and as you pass across the thresholds from one of his collections to another, you can feel the poet evolving in his style and concerns. In this sense, it's a cool experience, though palpably broad, rather than deep.
It would be silly of me to take you through these stages, but I can give you a few glimpses. The early poems are very narrative, blending surrealist imagery with very relatable, cinematic passages of bohemian New York life. There's a grittiness in these early works that gives the book a nice kick at the beginning.
The final poems in the book are an almost perfect inversion of these early narrative fragments. They are aimless, quiet, and intensely ambivalent, like the author is lost and has given up on ever being found.
In between these extremes, there are sequences that are twisted and comical, and others that are more political. Some are alienated and surreal, and others take on a piquant vulnerability, The range is broad, and because they are the stand-out works of a devoted lifelong poet, they are all excellent in quality.
It would have taken an exception level of weird, unexpected magic to bring this kind of a broad survey up to a five. However, I'll say this book's four star rating is well-deserved, and I will be more excited and confident about buying one of these collections in the future, knowing what to expect.
It would be silly of me to take you through these stages, but I can give you a few glimpses. The early poems are very narrative, blending surrealist imagery with very relatable, cinematic passages of bohemian New York life. There's a grittiness in these early works that gives the book a nice kick at the beginning.
The final poems in the book are an almost perfect inversion of these early narrative fragments. They are aimless, quiet, and intensely ambivalent, like the author is lost and has given up on ever being found.
In between these extremes, there are sequences that are twisted and comical, and others that are more political. Some are alienated and surreal, and others take on a piquant vulnerability, The range is broad, and because they are the stand-out works of a devoted lifelong poet, they are all excellent in quality.
It would have taken an exception level of weird, unexpected magic to bring this kind of a broad survey up to a five. However, I'll say this book's four star rating is well-deserved, and I will be more excited and confident about buying one of these collections in the future, knowing what to expect.
August 26, 2020
This is my second attempt at reading Simic, and this time I found myself more capable of entering his poetic world. His poems are strange and rich, often dramatic little tales, haunted landscapes and interiors where objects are personified and opaque. The cumulative effect of reading Simic's poems is to become familiar with this world, and to begin to recognize some of the familiar players, such as the clock, the mirror, the empty room, the unmade bed, the stranger on the street, mortality and isolation in various guises, but also unnamable states of being that the poems suggest. The feeling of being in a dream while awake inhabits many of these poems, as they are reports from the field that observe and translate these other worlds for the reader. The vocabulary is plain -- sparse, even -- but the images expand and carry with them specters of expectation, the weight of disappointments and misunderstanding, and the feeling that one has uncovered another layer below the one that we see everyday. His poems do something I don't often encounter in other poets, and now I want to immediately re-read this book to see what happens when I revisit these works.
October 20, 2021
Late September
The mail truck goes down the coast
Carrying a single letter.
At the end of a long pier
The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then
And forgets to put it down.
There is a menace in the air
Of tragedies in the making.
Last night you thought you heard television
In the house next door.
You were sure it was some new
Horror they were reporting,
So you went out to find out.
Barefoot, wearing just shorts.
It was only the sea sounding weary
After so many lifetimes
Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere
And never getting anywhere.
This morning, it felt like Sunday.
The heavens did their part
By casting no shadow along the boardwalk
Or the row of vacant cottages,
Among them a small church
With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close
As if they, too, had the shivers.
The mail truck goes down the coast
Carrying a single letter.
At the end of a long pier
The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then
And forgets to put it down.
There is a menace in the air
Of tragedies in the making.
Last night you thought you heard television
In the house next door.
You were sure it was some new
Horror they were reporting,
So you went out to find out.
Barefoot, wearing just shorts.
It was only the sea sounding weary
After so many lifetimes
Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere
And never getting anywhere.
This morning, it felt like Sunday.
The heavens did their part
By casting no shadow along the boardwalk
Or the row of vacant cottages,
Among them a small church
With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close
As if they, too, had the shivers.
November 3, 2022
It's hard to write a review of a book of poetry, to capture what touches you about it. I really enjoyed these 60 poems, published to celebrate Simic's appointment as poet laureate of the US. He has just the right amount of hard reality mixed with just the right dose of lyric phrases. He references historical periods and literary people but you don't have to be an expert in anything except being human to understand what he's talking about. He takes himself pretty seriously on the whole but there's an undercurrent of dark humor in his odd details that livens things up. Many of the poems finish with the kind of last line that rings into the silence of empty page below it. Great collection.
July 13, 2025
In this collection, the poet seems to be talking to himself about “things as they are” without much concern for his audience. Does it matter when you’re Charles Simic, U.S. Poet Laureate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1990), a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant (1984-1989), and the Wallace Stevens Award?
Favorite Poems:
“The Old World”
“Self-portrait in Bed”
“To Dreams”
“My Noiseless Entourage”
Favorite Poems:
“The Old World”
“Self-portrait in Bed”
“To Dreams”
“My Noiseless Entourage”
April 23, 2019
Rating: Low 4.
Favorites:
"Club Midnight"
"Mummy's Curse"
"Description of a Lost Thing"
Happiness, you are the bright red lining
Of the dark winter coat
Grief wears inside out.
- "Romantic Sonnet"
I believe in the soul; so far
It hasn't made much difference.
- "The Old World"
Like the sound of eyebrows
Raised by a villain
In a silent movie.
- "The Toy"
Favorites:
"Club Midnight"
"Mummy's Curse"
"Description of a Lost Thing"
Happiness, you are the bright red lining
Of the dark winter coat
Grief wears inside out.
- "Romantic Sonnet"
I believe in the soul; so far
It hasn't made much difference.
- "The Old World"
Like the sound of eyebrows
Raised by a villain
In a silent movie.
- "The Toy"
July 15, 2017
I wasn't sure at first, but as the years progressed Simic's work did as well. the moments that he highlights are both relevant and touching, with a voice that you find yourself drawn to. an enjoyable, quick read.
April 19, 2020
This collection of sixty poems is selected out of previous books and tend to showcase his development over the years. The books are intense with experience a offer a good variety of opinions, settings, and emotions.
January 11, 2023
3.7 stars. This was a nice poetry collection full of absurd, and sometimes whimsical, poems! Not all of them resonated with me, but most of them were inventive and interesting, and many were fun. If you’re looking for something short and slightly provocative, this one’s for you!
April 1, 2023
Not a huge fan, and as they said "his best 60 poems" I thought well love this idea, maybe it will make me a fan? Boring poems, very self conscious maybe I pray his worst poems?
Just could not enjoy.
Gave him 2 stars because of his reputation but this book should get 1 in my view.
Just could not enjoy.
Gave him 2 stars because of his reputation but this book should get 1 in my view.
October 12, 2025
Simic
Mourning poet,
poet of the mundane.
Understated, wry, accessible —
dexterous to the point
of self-effacement.
He could be the guy waiting your table,
or picking up your trash,
or the priest sealing the bond
with your loved one.
Only he writes poems. Good ones.
Mourning poet,
poet of the mundane.
Understated, wry, accessible —
dexterous to the point
of self-effacement.
He could be the guy waiting your table,
or picking up your trash,
or the priest sealing the bond
with your loved one.
Only he writes poems. Good ones.
June 11, 2017
Great imagery, as advertised. I'm not acclimated to reading poetry, and I suspect its finer qualities were lost on me. Still, enjoyable enough to be ingested on a single Saturday.
August 29, 2017
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
July 13, 2021
Pretty sure this is just the poems from his previous collections that were never published in any lit mags, i.e. not his best work. Great marketing idea tho...
May 26, 2022
Dark, sardonic, surreal
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