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Charon's Cosmology
Book by Simic, Charles
- GenresPoetry
47 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
1 person is currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Charles Simic
264 books473 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 20, 2008
Charles Simic, Charon's Cosmology (George Braziller, 1977)
Charles Simic, Austerities (George Braziller, 1982)
These two of Simic's entries in the Braziller poetry series (his last before it shut down in 1978, and his second upon its resurrection) read as two parts of a whole, so it makes some sense to review them together. Charon's Cosmology, nominated for the National Book Award, is the shorter of the two by a few pages. The usual wit, wisdom, and irony to be found in Simic is here in spades, along with some wanderings down various life paths to find new ways of looking at things for the viewer's pleasure.
"...I look at times over his shoulder
At all that whiteness. The snow is falling,
As you'd expect. A drop of ink
Gets buried easily, like a footprint.
I too would get lost but there's his shadows
On the wall, like a perched owl...."
(--"Poem")
(continued in my review of Austerities)
Charles Simic, Austerities (George Braziller, 1982)
These two of Simic's entries in the Braziller poetry series (his last before it shut down in 1978, and his second upon its resurrection) read as two parts of a whole, so it makes some sense to review them together. Charon's Cosmology, nominated for the National Book Award, is the shorter of the two by a few pages. The usual wit, wisdom, and irony to be found in Simic is here in spades, along with some wanderings down various life paths to find new ways of looking at things for the viewer's pleasure.
"...I look at times over his shoulder
At all that whiteness. The snow is falling,
As you'd expect. A drop of ink
Gets buried easily, like a footprint.
I too would get lost but there's his shadows
On the wall, like a perched owl...."
(--"Poem")
(continued in my review of Austerities)
February 14, 2023
My first experience with Charles Simic, and it won’t be my last. Very thought provoking and enjoyable. A series of poems I’ll have to come back to again and again to glean more from. But I like a slow burn and poems that you initially think you have little to no connection to that slowly work their way into your skin. What is poetry if not something to be reread endlessly? Simic’s work lends itself to this perfectly.
April 27, 2012
I was pulled into this book by the first poem and the $2 price tag. Unfortunately, it didn't really go anywhere from there; I found the writing immature, although not inexpert. Simic seemed to be avoiding what he wanted to talk about too much. Think of a very cagey Frank O'Hara. He wants to describe everything he sees, but he can't quite do it honestly. So it drifts to metaphor or humor at the wrong times.
The best is the title poem:
With only his dim lantern
To tell him where he is
And every time a mountain
Of fresh corpses to load up
Take them to the other side
Where there are plenty more
I’d say by now he must be confused
As to which side is which
I’d say it doesn’t matter
No one complains he’s got
Their pockets to go through
In one a crust of bread in another a sausage
Once in a long while a mirror
Or a book which he throws
Overboard into the dark river
Swift and cold and deep
The best is the title poem:
With only his dim lantern
To tell him where he is
And every time a mountain
Of fresh corpses to load up
Take them to the other side
Where there are plenty more
I’d say by now he must be confused
As to which side is which
I’d say it doesn’t matter
No one complains he’s got
Their pockets to go through
In one a crust of bread in another a sausage
Once in a long while a mirror
Or a book which he throws
Overboard into the dark river
Swift and cold and deep
December 28, 2007
see my review of Austerities...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews