SELECTED POEMS (1963-1983) CHARLES SIMIC

This small world.
This dumb show.(Description, p 121)

How could Simic not be good? His poems are funny and tight and sometimes beautiful, but often they were like a hard elbow next to you, making you look at something ridiculous.

...I am on a street corner
Where I shouldn't be.
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.
I have a kind of halloween mask
which I am afraid to put on. (Empire of Dreams, p 137)

But as for the middle of the book, oh Charles. One after another. These are the years of your life, I guess. Somebody died, didn't they? Somebody told you to stop writing about death, didn't they. Somebody told you about love and you laughed and later you regretted laughing. I don't know, Charles. I'm just guessing.

But I'm happy to report that I laughed too. Throughout the book. I laughed or did a little half-laugh when I got tired and sometimes I wished there was somebody in the room to listen to the poem when I read it again, aloud.