Yugoslavian-born Charles Simic, who came to the U.S. in 1954, is known as a creator of poetic fantasy. In this volume, he constructs bizarre, startling and entertaining visions in short descriptive sentences that pile one incongruous turn upon another, building images that are fresh and full of surprise. Like the river in one poem which flows backward, the power of Simic's inner world derives from turning logic on its head and taking a look from another direction. This collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990.


From Publishers Weekly
A master of the absurd and the unexpected, Simic ( Unending Blues ) presents a collection of prose poems that will not fail to amuse and delight. Writing in a series of "short-take" lyrical sentences, he builds observation upon observation to create paragraphs that startle through the juxtaposition of images and gratify through the freshness of his vision. Never one to shy away from the bizarre or the prosaic, Simic carries his poems to their logical--or illogical--extremes: "The dead man steps down from the scaffold. He holds his bloody head under his arm . . . he takes a seat at one of the tables at the tavern and orders two beers, one for him and one for his head." The poems move seamlessly between the ordinary and the extraordinary, and, although one often puzzles to draw conclusions from his fantastic verse, readers will not lose interest or the sense of pleasant surprise at the end of each work. The poem quoted in part above, for example, concludes powerfully: "It's so quiet in the world. One can hear the old river, which in its confusion sometimes forgets and flows backwards." Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
These 67 prose poems could be from Hamlet's writing tablet: investigating madness, they search for truth. Poet, translator, winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, Simic tries to make sense of a world that like "the old river . . . in its confusion sometimes forgets and flows backwards." Ancestors undergo mysterious "dark and evil days" (a man exchanges clothes with a dog, heaven is full of "little shrunken deaf ears instead of stars") that test their sanity. From the best of these sophisticated fables of trial by ordeal, wry intensity flashes. On "the verge of understanding," "in a forest of question marks," Simic's work, mingling Rimbaud and Socrates, startles us into meditation.- Frank Allen, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Publishers Weekly
A master of the absurd and the unexpected, Simic presents a collection of prose poems that will not fail to amuse and delight.


Book Description
In this collection, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, Charles Simic puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak himself in antiquity. Simic has new eyes, and in these wonderful poems and poems-in-prose he lets the reader see through them.

ANNOTATION

Pungent, sparkling prose poems.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this collection, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, Charles Simic puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak himself in antiquity. Simic has new eyes, and in these wonderful poems and poems-in-prose he lets the reader see through them.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal