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Scribbled in the Dark: Poems
From the Pulitzer Prize—winning former poet laureate, a collection of elegiac, irreverent, lyrical new poems—an American master at the height of his talent, shining light out into the dark
The latest volume of poetry from Charles Simic hums with the liveliness of the writer’s pen—Scribbled in the Dark brings the poet’s signature sardonic sense of humor, piercing social insight, and haunting lyricism to diverse and richly imagined landscapes.
Peopled by policemen, presidents, kids in Halloween masks, a fortune-teller, a fly on the wall of the poet’s kitchen; on crowded New York streets, on park benches, and under darkened skies: the pages within toy with the end of the world and its infinity. Charles Simic continues to be an imitable voice in modern American poetry, one of its finest chroniclers of the human condition.
The latest volume of poetry from Charles Simic hums with the liveliness of the writer’s pen—Scribbled in the Dark brings the poet’s signature sardonic sense of humor, piercing social insight, and haunting lyricism to diverse and richly imagined landscapes.
Peopled by policemen, presidents, kids in Halloween masks, a fortune-teller, a fly on the wall of the poet’s kitchen; on crowded New York streets, on park benches, and under darkened skies: the pages within toy with the end of the world and its infinity. Charles Simic continues to be an imitable voice in modern American poetry, one of its finest chroniclers of the human condition.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published June 13, 2017
31 people are currently reading
364 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
July 12, 2017
As I get older, I like to return to the poetry of those I once read, their own poetry of getting older. Like having coffee with a particularly insightful or clever old friend. And I generally find it somewhat satisfying to see the echoes of that great poetry in the later, often lesser poetry. But it’s usually echoes. I turned to the latest (2017) collection of Charles Smic’s poetry with low expectations, though I liked the title and found what I expected: echoes of the absurd, the whimsical, the amusing, the occasional dark, the language play.
One thing I looked for is Simic’s sense of the world now, for himself and the larger world, the planet. He’s always been both playful and sardonic about the state of the world and himself. Here’s an excerpt from a poem:
Sat up
Like a firecracker
In bed,
Startled
By the thought
Of my death.
*
Hotel of Bad Dreams.
The night clerk
Deaf as a shoe brush.
*
Body and soul
Dressed up
As shadow puppets,
Playing their farces
The book’s references to mortality, the undertaker, and the graveyard make it look like a poet's typical late poems, but Simic has always written about death—and managed to make you laugh along the way, at times.
“Nothing epic,” the poet Philip Levine said of his own late work. “Just the small heroics of getting through the day when the day doesn’t give a shit, getting through the world with as much dignity as you can pull together from the tiny resources left to you.”
Here’s one from Simic about his wife:
The woman I love is a saint
Who deserves to have
People falling on their knees
Instead, here she is on the floor
Hitting a mouse with a shoe
As tears run down her face.
An interview with Simic:
http://lithub.com/charles-simic-liter...
Some excerpts from that interview, this statement on what I observed are the familiar obsessions in his work:
All poets, if they live as long as I have, tend to repeat themselves. Behind those images and subjects one returns to again and again, there are mysteries one cannot solve, mysteries of one’s identity and one’s fate. We have one life and that life continues to be a riddle, so it becomes impossible to leave all that behind and start anew as a poet in each new book.
And that title? Simic actually does often write in the dark:
I scribble in little notebooks or on pieces of paper with a pencil or a ballpoint pen words, images, lines of poetry wherever I happened to be. At night, since I don’t want to turn on the light and wake up my wife, I do so in the dark.
And the world we are faced with, in 2017:
“We are fucked, Charlie,” a neighbor told me and he didn’t have to explain to me what he meant. In the meantime, the lilacs have blossomed, the children are chasing each other and laughing in the school playground and I’m going for a nice long walk in the woods.
The “ever present sense of evil in the world” he sometimes refers to is always part of his work, sure, but in a range of poems there is also eroticism, silliness, warmth, absurdity.
I like his answer to the question about why he still writes, at 77:
After 60 years what keeps going is the fascination of making something out of nothing. A word comes into my head, then a phrase, and eventually a poem begins to take shape I may tinker with for years. My only ambition is to make something I have not done before and make it good.
Here’s a longer answer to that question: Charles Simic, Why I Still Write Poetry:
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/05/...
Simic invites me to keep reading, in his last poem of the collection,(“At Tender Mercy”:
Stay with me
As I push further and further
Into the dark.
Gladly, is my reply.
One thing I looked for is Simic’s sense of the world now, for himself and the larger world, the planet. He’s always been both playful and sardonic about the state of the world and himself. Here’s an excerpt from a poem:
Sat up
Like a firecracker
In bed,
Startled
By the thought
Of my death.
*
Hotel of Bad Dreams.
The night clerk
Deaf as a shoe brush.
*
Body and soul
Dressed up
As shadow puppets,
Playing their farces
The book’s references to mortality, the undertaker, and the graveyard make it look like a poet's typical late poems, but Simic has always written about death—and managed to make you laugh along the way, at times.
“Nothing epic,” the poet Philip Levine said of his own late work. “Just the small heroics of getting through the day when the day doesn’t give a shit, getting through the world with as much dignity as you can pull together from the tiny resources left to you.”
Here’s one from Simic about his wife:
The woman I love is a saint
Who deserves to have
People falling on their knees
Instead, here she is on the floor
Hitting a mouse with a shoe
As tears run down her face.
An interview with Simic:
http://lithub.com/charles-simic-liter...
Some excerpts from that interview, this statement on what I observed are the familiar obsessions in his work:
All poets, if they live as long as I have, tend to repeat themselves. Behind those images and subjects one returns to again and again, there are mysteries one cannot solve, mysteries of one’s identity and one’s fate. We have one life and that life continues to be a riddle, so it becomes impossible to leave all that behind and start anew as a poet in each new book.
And that title? Simic actually does often write in the dark:
I scribble in little notebooks or on pieces of paper with a pencil or a ballpoint pen words, images, lines of poetry wherever I happened to be. At night, since I don’t want to turn on the light and wake up my wife, I do so in the dark.
And the world we are faced with, in 2017:
“We are fucked, Charlie,” a neighbor told me and he didn’t have to explain to me what he meant. In the meantime, the lilacs have blossomed, the children are chasing each other and laughing in the school playground and I’m going for a nice long walk in the woods.
The “ever present sense of evil in the world” he sometimes refers to is always part of his work, sure, but in a range of poems there is also eroticism, silliness, warmth, absurdity.
I like his answer to the question about why he still writes, at 77:
After 60 years what keeps going is the fascination of making something out of nothing. A word comes into my head, then a phrase, and eventually a poem begins to take shape I may tinker with for years. My only ambition is to make something I have not done before and make it good.
Here’s a longer answer to that question: Charles Simic, Why I Still Write Poetry:
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/05/...
Simic invites me to keep reading, in his last poem of the collection,(“At Tender Mercy”:
Stay with me
As I push further and further
Into the dark.
Gladly, is my reply.
October 1, 2017
To see and be able to comment on the darkness that creeps into our existence every day (and yet smile) is a rare gift; Charles Simic reminds me of an existential Charlie Brown...trying to shear up the scaffolding of life with tools that were given to us without instruction.
September 2, 2021
On a spider repairing his web
This autumn night,
Stay with me,
As I push further and further
Into the dark.
Autumn slipped into view today and this slim volume reflected such perfectly. It is a treatise on diminishing returns. Well worth someone's time when considering the impending crossroads.
This autumn night,
Stay with me,
As I push further and further
Into the dark.
Autumn slipped into view today and this slim volume reflected such perfectly. It is a treatise on diminishing returns. Well worth someone's time when considering the impending crossroads.
September 24, 2017
AT TENDER MERCY
O lone streetlight,
Trying to shed
What light you can
On a spider repairing his web
This autumn night,
Stay with me,
As I push further and further
Into the dark.
O lone streetlight,
Trying to shed
What light you can
On a spider repairing his web
This autumn night,
Stay with me,
As I push further and further
Into the dark.
February 11, 2021
I typically enjoy Simic’s work. I revere his early poems especially. This collection is lackluster, slightly unimaginative, and surprisingly sentimental compared to his best poems. 3 stars because there are some good moments.
August 14, 2017
I liked these poems very much, enough to encourage me to seek out his earlier work. Simic is a master at drawing incisive imagery in a few spare lines. In The Lover: "When I lived on a farm I wrote love letters To chickens pecking in the yard, Or I'd sit in the outhouse writing one to a spider Mending his web over my head. That's when my wife took off with the mailman." Funny, dark, and meditative on the nature of the human condition; executed with a light touch.
February 9, 2017
This collection of free verse poems, powered by childhood memories and images from everyday life, formed my first experience with the Yugoslavian-born poet (named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2007) and critic. Favorite line: “Saturday flashing / Like a pinball machine in the morgue” (“The Week”). Releases June 13th.
dnf
March 1, 2021DNF @13%
2017; Ecco/HarperCollins
I couldn't get into this poetry collection. I am picky about poetry so please see other reviews. For me poetry either speaks to me or doesn't. A lot of times I read it for mediation for my anxiety.
***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***
2017; Ecco/HarperCollins
I couldn't get into this poetry collection. I am picky about poetry so please see other reviews. For me poetry either speaks to me or doesn't. A lot of times I read it for mediation for my anxiety.
***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***
Read
February 27, 2021Just beautiful!
From Swept Away:
Melville had the sea and Poe his nightmares,
To thrill them and haunt them,
And you have the faces of strangers,
Glimpsed once and never again.
--
From Star Atlas:
The madness of it, Miss Dickinson!
Then the dawning suspicion—
We are here alone ventriloquizing
For the one we call God.
From Swept Away:
Melville had the sea and Poe his nightmares,
To thrill them and haunt them,
And you have the faces of strangers,
Glimpsed once and never again.
--
From Star Atlas:
The madness of it, Miss Dickinson!
Then the dawning suspicion—
We are here alone ventriloquizing
For the one we call God.
January 6, 2018
really enjoyable! not my favorite book of poems ever but short and sweet and observational. My favorite poems were The Blizzard, The Lifeboat, At the Vacancy Sign, and January.
September 19, 2017
Fun, accessible poetry, veering wildly from the everyday to the imponderable.
December 25, 2017
Charles Simic has been one of my favorite poets since the early 1970s because of the way he looks at life and internalizes what he sees. His earlier poetry, I felt, was more energetic, but this last volume is more mature and somber, yet more accepting of life with a sense of humor.
In general, most of the poems are observances of images that catch the poet’s eye and his reactions to them. Some of the poems can be considered to be only descriptions; however, when the poet turns to personal rather than musing on the general, I find his words to be precious and captivating.
The book is divided into four sections. I was much impressed with the second poem in the first section, titled Seeing Things because it must be so personal, yet at the same time universal because it reflects an immigrant’s feelings, noticing his surroundings and reacting to them possibly for the first time. In the lines of To Boredom, “I am the child of rainy Sundays/ I watched time crawl/Like an injured fly/ Over the wet windowpane…” I felt the same deep sensitivity. In the same section, also, Fair Weather Friends and All Gone into the Dark carry a feeling of mourning or maybe a eulogy to one’s own life like several other poems in this book.
Section two, I think, is the darkest section as it has to do with war, misery, cruelty, or ennui. In this sense, The Night and the Cold is outstanding. On the other hand, the last two poems of this section, The Message and Birds Know, are less chilling.
Section three is a relief from section two’s gloom since its poems are more upbeat in comparison. Although a bit of a dark mood creeps in every now and then, the poems in this section show more of this poet’s inimitable sense of humor. Here, he is observing happier everyday scenes. As such, “The Saint” is a delight in which the poet’s beloved is likened to a saint who is trying to get rid of a mouse while she weeps.
Section four is the most philosophical section of all with the poet seeing the positive and the negative in his subjects and looking for a balance in between. Many a Holy Man is such a poem. Sometimes, the poet asks questions like in The Lifeboat, which I felt a kinship with as I did with Night Owls where some of us can be “Drawn and quartered/ Between body and soul.” Then, the last poem in the book, At Tender Mercy, begins with the observation of a street light and ends with the poet’s personal feelings or fear of the dark, which may possibly be death or ignorance.
Assessment of any poem is an individual process for each person. What makes these poems stand out for me are the brilliant, detailed images and this poet’s unique response to them.
In general, most of the poems are observances of images that catch the poet’s eye and his reactions to them. Some of the poems can be considered to be only descriptions; however, when the poet turns to personal rather than musing on the general, I find his words to be precious and captivating.
The book is divided into four sections. I was much impressed with the second poem in the first section, titled Seeing Things because it must be so personal, yet at the same time universal because it reflects an immigrant’s feelings, noticing his surroundings and reacting to them possibly for the first time. In the lines of To Boredom, “I am the child of rainy Sundays/ I watched time crawl/Like an injured fly/ Over the wet windowpane…” I felt the same deep sensitivity. In the same section, also, Fair Weather Friends and All Gone into the Dark carry a feeling of mourning or maybe a eulogy to one’s own life like several other poems in this book.
Section two, I think, is the darkest section as it has to do with war, misery, cruelty, or ennui. In this sense, The Night and the Cold is outstanding. On the other hand, the last two poems of this section, The Message and Birds Know, are less chilling.
Section three is a relief from section two’s gloom since its poems are more upbeat in comparison. Although a bit of a dark mood creeps in every now and then, the poems in this section show more of this poet’s inimitable sense of humor. Here, he is observing happier everyday scenes. As such, “The Saint” is a delight in which the poet’s beloved is likened to a saint who is trying to get rid of a mouse while she weeps.
Section four is the most philosophical section of all with the poet seeing the positive and the negative in his subjects and looking for a balance in between. Many a Holy Man is such a poem. Sometimes, the poet asks questions like in The Lifeboat, which I felt a kinship with as I did with Night Owls where some of us can be “Drawn and quartered/ Between body and soul.” Then, the last poem in the book, At Tender Mercy, begins with the observation of a street light and ends with the poet’s personal feelings or fear of the dark, which may possibly be death or ignorance.
Assessment of any poem is an individual process for each person. What makes these poems stand out for me are the brilliant, detailed images and this poet’s unique response to them.
November 28, 2022
”Together with its daily horrors,
Life doles out these small pleasures:
A platter of raw oysters on ice,
A ripe lemon sliced in half,
And a glass of chilled white wine.”
Simultaneously the best and worst of Simic’s poetry is his use of imagery. In his best moments, these images are vibrant enough to catch your breath in your throat and make you stop to savor every word; in his worst moments, they are a crutch he uses to hide the fact that there’s nothing meaningful beyond the visuals. I either loved these poems or found them lackluster beyond the portraits Simic conjures up for his readers.
Some lines I loved:
From “Bare Trees”:
They are fans of horror film
In the fading light of a November day,
The gray surface of the pond
Is a movie screen they are watching.”
From “The Infinite”:
”The infinite yawns and keeps yawning.
Is it sleepy?
Does it miss Pythagoras?
The sails on Columbus’s three ships?
Does the sound of the surf remind it of itself?
……………………
Does it see us as a couple of fireflies
Playing hide-and-seek in a graveyard?
Does it find us good to eat?”
Life doles out these small pleasures:
A platter of raw oysters on ice,
A ripe lemon sliced in half,
And a glass of chilled white wine.”
Simultaneously the best and worst of Simic’s poetry is his use of imagery. In his best moments, these images are vibrant enough to catch your breath in your throat and make you stop to savor every word; in his worst moments, they are a crutch he uses to hide the fact that there’s nothing meaningful beyond the visuals. I either loved these poems or found them lackluster beyond the portraits Simic conjures up for his readers.
Some lines I loved:
From “Bare Trees”:
They are fans of horror film
In the fading light of a November day,
The gray surface of the pond
Is a movie screen they are watching.”
From “The Infinite”:
”The infinite yawns and keeps yawning.
Is it sleepy?
Does it miss Pythagoras?
The sails on Columbus’s three ships?
Does the sound of the surf remind it of itself?
……………………
Does it see us as a couple of fireflies
Playing hide-and-seek in a graveyard?
Does it find us good to eat?”
January 16, 2023
Charles Simic recently died and I had not been familiar with his poetry. I found this volume in a used bookstore and it was a nice introduction, written in the last years of his life.
Here is a favorite:
At Tender Mercy
O lone streetlight,
Trying to shed
What light you can
On a spider repairing his web
This autumn night,
Stay with me,
As I push farther and farther
Into the dark.
Here is a favorite:
At Tender Mercy
O lone streetlight,
Trying to shed
What light you can
On a spider repairing his web
This autumn night,
Stay with me,
As I push farther and farther
Into the dark.
April 4, 2024
Simic holds down the park bench, running through the weekly meetings with the birds and touches on comic energy of the world around us.
Favorites:
Uninvited Guest
All Gone Into The Dark
The Week
To Boredom
In Wonder
Ancient Combatant
Roadhouse
Stray Hen
Description
At Tender Mercy
Favorites:
Uninvited Guest
All Gone Into The Dark
The Week
To Boredom
In Wonder
Ancient Combatant
Roadhouse
Stray Hen
Description
At Tender Mercy
April 9, 2023
Every poem is looking for a light in the desolation that might not be there—and when it is it casts shadows
Read
September 25, 2023It was nice that the words were bigger and this was easier to read. But I did not like reading a book of a bunch of different poems it felt strange and Kinda random.
November 26, 2023
If you’re in a dark place, don’t read this book. It’ll take you to a darker one.
Favorite poems: ‘Past the Cemetary’, (sic) and ‘At Tender Mercy’.
Favorite poems: ‘Past the Cemetary’, (sic) and ‘At Tender Mercy’.
January 30, 2021
This has been on my to read bookshelf for years. I wanted to read some poetry from a contemporary male since it’s a POV I don’t indulge in reading very often. It was fine — they’re quick short poems in free verse and touch on a variety of motifs from nostalgia to loss. I found the first few parts depressing and a little jaded but I thought his tone became more bittersweet toward the end — perhaps that was his point.
September 11, 2017
I am no fan of poetry but I guess the cover art and the shortness of the book appealed to me. This is the kind of poetry I like! Its accessible and clever and thought-provoking in its brevity.
November 12, 2018
I had the privilege of attending a recent poetry reading by Charles Simic, and briefly chatting with him afterward as he signed my copy of Scribbled. Nice guy. The poems in this book are typical of his style - each one like a dream that the reader enters into. Spare, but evocative descriptions. A touch of the surreal, absurd, or slightly ominous. I always find much to love in his poetry collections, and this one is no exception.
July 3, 2017
January
Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.
An empire, I read somewhere,
Maintains itself through
The cruelty of its prisons.
Poetry is very subjective so for me I give his style three stars (above being my favourite in this volume.)
A very quick read with a unique style.
Check it out!
Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.
An empire, I read somewhere,
Maintains itself through
The cruelty of its prisons.
Poetry is very subjective so for me I give his style three stars (above being my favourite in this volume.)
A very quick read with a unique style.
Check it out!
July 20, 2017
Great! Charles Simic is a joy to read.
October 12, 2018
Again, as someone who is very familiar with the writing of noted contemporary poets [1], I found much in this book to enjoy. To be sure, the poems in this book have been previously compiled in other publications, mostly magazines of some kind, and the author is gracious enough to thank them for the freedom to reprint them here. In at least one case--the haunting titular poem--the poem has been reprinted in other books by the author, a fairly common practice, even for an author as prolific in his writing as this one. Even so, these poems generally share the feeling of being nocturnes, poems about the night or written in the night or generally being dark and melancholy writings, and as someone who has certainly contributed to that genre myself in my own writings there is clearly much I can appreciate here as a fellow poet of the night. Whether or not you can appreciate this collection of poetry as well depends in large part on how you feel with the author dwelling on themes of night and darkness. The less you appreciate such material, the less you will enjoy the author's seeming fixation on it.
The poems in this short collection of less than 100 pages are divided into four sections, and it should be readily understood that these are pretty dark poems, although most of them are very short. The collection begins with the narrator of the poem in fear of the eraser, and continues with reflections on the tensions between the better and worse angels of the author's nature, musings on loneliness and isolation, the feeling of being surrounded by strangers and abandoned by God and Jesus, approaching death, or dealing with persistent boredom. It is hard to find any poems here that are jubilant or even happy, as has been the case with some of the author's previous work. Instead, these are poems that are gloomy to the max, and where night is not in mind winter is with its themes of death and decay and barrenness. The titular poem gives some idea of what is going on with the author's mindset, and it is not a happy place:
A shout in the street.
Someone locking horns with his demon.
Then, calm returning.
The wind tousling the leaves.
The birds in their nests
Pleased to be rocked back to sleep.
Night turning cool.
Streams of blood in the gutter
Waiting for sunrise.
What is the author getting at here? Despite the general gloomy and melancholy tone of the poetry, it is clear that the author is engaged in a deep struggle. He recognizes his own demons and his (sometimes unsuccessful) struggle against them. This is certainly something that many people can identify with, and the author's persistence in that struggle despite his lack of confidence of being one of the blessed is itself a noble and worthwhile one. Moreover, the author himself not only draws the empathy of the reader, who is likely also to be some sort of struggling and tormented soul--one could scarcely imagine any other type of person being drawn to this sort of work--but also shows empathy to the reader, as in his call to fellow insomniacs to leave aside their gloomy night thinking for at least a time and get some sleep. Ultimately, it is the author's flinty courage and deep sense of empathy that allows his work to have a positive impression despite being filled with so many unhappy poems about darkness and solitude and death and isolation. After all, even the most isolated and gloomy and tormented soul is still a child of the heavenly Father created in His image, and every scribble in the dark an attempt to leave a record behind of a life worth remembering.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
The poems in this short collection of less than 100 pages are divided into four sections, and it should be readily understood that these are pretty dark poems, although most of them are very short. The collection begins with the narrator of the poem in fear of the eraser, and continues with reflections on the tensions between the better and worse angels of the author's nature, musings on loneliness and isolation, the feeling of being surrounded by strangers and abandoned by God and Jesus, approaching death, or dealing with persistent boredom. It is hard to find any poems here that are jubilant or even happy, as has been the case with some of the author's previous work. Instead, these are poems that are gloomy to the max, and where night is not in mind winter is with its themes of death and decay and barrenness. The titular poem gives some idea of what is going on with the author's mindset, and it is not a happy place:
A shout in the street.
Someone locking horns with his demon.
Then, calm returning.
The wind tousling the leaves.
The birds in their nests
Pleased to be rocked back to sleep.
Night turning cool.
Streams of blood in the gutter
Waiting for sunrise.
What is the author getting at here? Despite the general gloomy and melancholy tone of the poetry, it is clear that the author is engaged in a deep struggle. He recognizes his own demons and his (sometimes unsuccessful) struggle against them. This is certainly something that many people can identify with, and the author's persistence in that struggle despite his lack of confidence of being one of the blessed is itself a noble and worthwhile one. Moreover, the author himself not only draws the empathy of the reader, who is likely also to be some sort of struggling and tormented soul--one could scarcely imagine any other type of person being drawn to this sort of work--but also shows empathy to the reader, as in his call to fellow insomniacs to leave aside their gloomy night thinking for at least a time and get some sleep. Ultimately, it is the author's flinty courage and deep sense of empathy that allows his work to have a positive impression despite being filled with so many unhappy poems about darkness and solitude and death and isolation. After all, even the most isolated and gloomy and tormented soul is still a child of the heavenly Father created in His image, and every scribble in the dark an attempt to leave a record behind of a life worth remembering.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
Read
December 30, 2019The judge appears to be asleep:
His heavy eyelids are lowered
And his black glasses rest
On a thick stack of documents.
Take your shoes off as you enter,
So as not to disturb his rest,
But keep your white socks on.
The floor of the courtroom is cold.
What’s left of the fading daylight
Is about to make its quiet exit,
Leaving the darkness in our souls
To do what it damn pleases here”
“The news of the world is always old.
Nothing new ever happens,
The innocent get slaughtered
While some guy on TV makes excuses,
And the bartender refills our drinks,
His left hand clasped behind
His arching back, either maimed
By a dog or wielding a blackjack.
Our wars, it seems, are not going well.
A senator got caught soliciting sex
In a public bathroom at an airport,
And rain and snow are on the way..
“For a mind full of disquiet
A trembling roadside weed is Cassandra,
And so is the sight
Of a boarded up public library,
The rows of books beyond its windows
Unopened for years,
The sickly old dog on its steps,
And a man slumped next to him,
His mouth working mutely
Like an actor unable to recall his lines
At the end of some tragic farce
“If it’s true that the devil has his finger
In every pie, he must be waiting
For the night to fall, the darkness to
Thicken in the yard, so we won’t see him
Lick the finger he dipped in your pie,
The one you took out of the oven, love,
And left to cool by the open window
His heavy eyelids are lowered
And his black glasses rest
On a thick stack of documents.
Take your shoes off as you enter,
So as not to disturb his rest,
But keep your white socks on.
The floor of the courtroom is cold.
What’s left of the fading daylight
Is about to make its quiet exit,
Leaving the darkness in our souls
To do what it damn pleases here”
“The news of the world is always old.
Nothing new ever happens,
The innocent get slaughtered
While some guy on TV makes excuses,
And the bartender refills our drinks,
His left hand clasped behind
His arching back, either maimed
By a dog or wielding a blackjack.
Our wars, it seems, are not going well.
A senator got caught soliciting sex
In a public bathroom at an airport,
And rain and snow are on the way..
“For a mind full of disquiet
A trembling roadside weed is Cassandra,
And so is the sight
Of a boarded up public library,
The rows of books beyond its windows
Unopened for years,
The sickly old dog on its steps,
And a man slumped next to him,
His mouth working mutely
Like an actor unable to recall his lines
At the end of some tragic farce
“If it’s true that the devil has his finger
In every pie, he must be waiting
For the night to fall, the darkness to
Thicken in the yard, so we won’t see him
Lick the finger he dipped in your pie,
The one you took out of the oven, love,
And left to cool by the open window
August 29, 2017
Poetry is usually out of my comfort zone. When I saw this book at the library and read that the poet won a Pullitzer Prize, I decided to give it a try. The title seemed clever. On the book jacket, Simac's style is described in a quote from New York Review of Books. "His distinctive poetic style...feels modest, seemingly casual, with a built-in shrug of bemused puzzlement before life's anomalies." This quote caught my attention.
The volume of poems is just 96 pages with a free verse poem on each page. Some of the poems are quite short. Almost all of them are very dark. The poet's view of the world is much darker than my own. With the exception of 5 or 6 poems, I just could not relate to the author's perspective.
After finishing this book, I read that the poems were written when the poet was in his later 70's and referenced mortality as part of the human condition. I am a decade younger than the poet. As I advance in age, I hope I am able to maintain a more optimistic view, of the world, people, mortality.
I rated this book 3 stars, rounded up from 2.5, taking into consideration that I am not a big fan of poetry.
The volume of poems is just 96 pages with a free verse poem on each page. Some of the poems are quite short. Almost all of them are very dark. The poet's view of the world is much darker than my own. With the exception of 5 or 6 poems, I just could not relate to the author's perspective.
After finishing this book, I read that the poems were written when the poet was in his later 70's and referenced mortality as part of the human condition. I am a decade younger than the poet. As I advance in age, I hope I am able to maintain a more optimistic view, of the world, people, mortality.
I rated this book 3 stars, rounded up from 2.5, taking into consideration that I am not a big fan of poetry.
February 28, 2020
If your preferred poetry is that what's taxing to read and densely cribbed with layered allusions to forgotten footnotes of pedantry, then don't read this. However, if you like poetry that's clever, deceitfully simple, and full of life's whimsy (though with a thick dark thread squiggled about it all), then get yourself in here!
Now, do not mistake my above warning to mean that this is all fluff. No, it's seriously good, and it's edges are keen, but it does not parade about with grandeur or flaunt the pornography of Form. this collection exhibits, at it's base, a strong observatory sense, with a mild dose of levity and some wickedness peppered on top. There's a dang poem about bad penmanship in here, y'all! There's a one about the worst trip to the movies since the Waynes went to see The Mark of Zorro (forgive me if my analogy borders on too playful)! There's one about a dog who wants people food, and one about the quiet that descends at the cessation of a party, and innumerable ones about death, loss, and longing (you know, Normal Poetry Stuff)!
These are good. Like, really good. They are not baroque or gussied up, nor are they pandering or flat: they are just good.
Now, do not mistake my above warning to mean that this is all fluff. No, it's seriously good, and it's edges are keen, but it does not parade about with grandeur or flaunt the pornography of Form. this collection exhibits, at it's base, a strong observatory sense, with a mild dose of levity and some wickedness peppered on top. There's a dang poem about bad penmanship in here, y'all! There's a one about the worst trip to the movies since the Waynes went to see The Mark of Zorro (forgive me if my analogy borders on too playful)! There's one about a dog who wants people food, and one about the quiet that descends at the cessation of a party, and innumerable ones about death, loss, and longing (you know, Normal Poetry Stuff)!
These are good. Like, really good. They are not baroque or gussied up, nor are they pandering or flat: they are just good.
April 29, 2025
There are some good ones in here, but overall it's a mid collection of poems. They're mostly pretty short, each line no more than a few words, each stanza no more than a few lines. For me, the language matters a lot in shorter poems because that means each word has a greater contribution to the overall word count; if the poem should be a short, intense experience, then the language should be hefty and interesting! However, I was never really surprised by anything here, either in word choice, syntax, or phrasing. The imagery is consistently clean; I give Charles Simic that though.
A few stand outs: "Fish Out of Water," " In Wonder," and "The White Cat"
The rest of the poems are kind of non-memorable. I'd skip this one, and just read Charles Simic's prose poem collection, "The World Doesn't End" again. Those are great. These poems, not so much.
1 star. A bad read (haha), though that may be taking it too far. A bad but not terrible read?
A few stand outs: "Fish Out of Water," " In Wonder," and "The White Cat"
The rest of the poems are kind of non-memorable. I'd skip this one, and just read Charles Simic's prose poem collection, "The World Doesn't End" again. Those are great. These poems, not so much.
1 star. A bad read (haha), though that may be taking it too far. A bad but not terrible read?
March 23, 2025
Far from me to judge a writer based on one collection of poems, but I struggled to match the superlative reviews and bundles of prizes with the uninspiring poems in Scribbled in the Dark. I didn't find anything new or revelatory, either in language or in structure or even thematically. There's a neat and occasionally witty sense of observational cleverness about the poems here, taking snapshot moments, single objects or shadowy individuals to form ghosts of narratives. Perhaps an odd poem jumps out at you and tells a story that relates, but that rarely happened for me. I wasn't surprised by what I found, nor was I wowed by an eye for beauty or despair or wonder. The first lines are often good ("Dark thought on a sunny day", "I'm the child of rainy Sundays" or "Our lives are scary and droll") but they roll on comfortably rather than soaring. That might suit some readers - certainly there's a corrolation between the feel of the poems and the drawing on the cover of a man on a park bench watching birds feed. It feels like Simic knows his audience. The poems here might aim to tell greater narratives and touch on wider themes, but they feel too introverted and narrow to really make me feel the writer seriously wants to engage with you.
There are, of course, a few gems because Simic is clearly a talented poet and playing to his strengths. I like January's profound refrain - "An empire.../ Maintains itself through/ The cruelty of its prisons" - in references to a child's frozen fingerprints on a classrooom window. The final part of four stretches into more abstract and emotional realms and I liked the poems here much more. Highlights include the titular poem, "Looking for a place to hide", "The Infinite", "Past the Cemetry" and "Star Atlas". The final poem, "At Tender Mercy", hints at what this collection could have been with a a little bit of loose daring. It shakes of the dust of what went before and offers something quiet, obtuse and simultaneously crystaline. Based on some of the great poems here, I should certainly read more of Charles Simic's work before passing judgement. On this collection alone, he hasn't sold me.
There are, of course, a few gems because Simic is clearly a talented poet and playing to his strengths. I like January's profound refrain - "An empire.../ Maintains itself through/ The cruelty of its prisons" - in references to a child's frozen fingerprints on a classrooom window. The final part of four stretches into more abstract and emotional realms and I liked the poems here much more. Highlights include the titular poem, "Looking for a place to hide", "The Infinite", "Past the Cemetry" and "Star Atlas". The final poem, "At Tender Mercy", hints at what this collection could have been with a a little bit of loose daring. It shakes of the dust of what went before and offers something quiet, obtuse and simultaneously crystaline. Based on some of the great poems here, I should certainly read more of Charles Simic's work before passing judgement. On this collection alone, he hasn't sold me.
December 20, 2017
History
"Our life stories are scary and droll,
Like masks children wear on Halloween
As they go from door to door
Holding the little ones by the hand
In Some neighborhood along torn down,
Where people ate their dinners
In angry silence or quarreling loudly,
When there was a knock on the door,
A soft knock a shy boy makes
Dressed in a costume his mother made.
What's this you're wearing, kid?
And where did you get that mask?
That made everyone laugh here
While you stood staring at us,
As if you knew already we were history."
January
"Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.
An empire, I read somewhere,
Maintains itself through
The cruelty of its prisons."
"Our life stories are scary and droll,
Like masks children wear on Halloween
As they go from door to door
Holding the little ones by the hand
In Some neighborhood along torn down,
Where people ate their dinners
In angry silence or quarreling loudly,
When there was a knock on the door,
A soft knock a shy boy makes
Dressed in a costume his mother made.
What's this you're wearing, kid?
And where did you get that mask?
That made everyone laugh here
While you stood staring at us,
As if you knew already we were history."
January
"Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.
An empire, I read somewhere,
Maintains itself through
The cruelty of its prisons."
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