Just 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 ventriloquizingFor the one we call God.

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.

Fun, accessible poetry, veering wildly from the everyday to the imponderable.

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.

On a spider repairing his webThis autumn night,Stay with me,As I push further and furtherInto 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.

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.

JanuaryChildren’s fingerprintsOn a frozen windowOf a small schoolhouse.An empire, I read somewhere,Maintains itself throughThe 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!

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...

Great! Charles Simic is a joy to read.

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.

AT TENDER MERCYO lone streetlight,Trying to shedWhat light you canOn a spider repairing his webThis autumn night,Stay with me,As I push further and furtherInto the dark.

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.

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 h...

The judge appears to be asleep:His heavy eyelids are loweredAnd his black glasses restOn 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 daylightIs about to make its quiet exit,Leaving the darkness in our soulsTo do what it damn pleases here”“The news of the world is always old.Nothing new ever happens,The innocent get slaughteredWhile some guy on TV makes excuses,A...

DNF @13%2017; Ecco/HarperCollinsI 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.***

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.

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...

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.

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.

I'm going to start this off with the statement: I am very picky about poetry. I have a lot of definitive opinions on what I like and what I absolutely despise about poetry. That being said, this is pretty good. I found some of the poems very poignant, profound, and containing beautiful imagery. But not enough of them to rate this higher. There were a number of poems that I could discern no real meaning. I could compare them to abstract art in that they were a jumble of words strung together that...