Charles Simic: Selected Early Poems

by Charles Simic

Book Overview

United States poet laureate & Pulitzer Prize winner, Charles Simic adds a new introduction to the most comprehensive collection of his early poetry from 1963-1983. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807614831
• ISBN13: 9780807614839
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: George Braziller
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

charles simicevery one shouldread it

his poems are for grownups .i read his poems buyhis books some of his characters arehard to understand he is up there with robertfrost and whauden.

Great Introduction to Simic

This book is a great introduction to the poetry of Charles Simic. The poems represent his imagistic, surrealist style and his concise use of language. Poems suck as "Watch Repair" & "Fork" create thought provoking representations for the reader. If you are a fan of Simic's collections Jackstraws and The World Doesn't End, this collection is definitely for you.

Great poems, collection a bit lacking

This book is all right if you're just discovering Simic, but if you're adding it to a collection it's not an essential buy. Despite the dust jacket's promise it doesn't deliver in the way of new or revised material, and the choice of poems mirrors too much the older (and cheaper) compilation, Selected Poems. Most of Simic's books are available and very affordable in paperback, and once you get to know him, you'll want them all. The "greatest hits" package here is optional.

An essential volume of poems

Anyone who is interested in the breadth, playfulness and imagistic intensity of contemporary American poetry needs to buy this book. Simic's early poems--surreal and yet rooted many times in the commonalities of life--are sparse yet full of surprises. These poems, when I was an undergrad, changed the way I THOUGHT about poetry, what it could accomplish. Nearly devoid of literary pretentions, Simic's poetry is nonetheless artful, using slang, riddles and the like to construct his worlds-within-poems. Simic later wrote a book called Dimestore Alchemy on the work of Joseph Cornell and I couldn't think of a better description than 'dimestore alchemy' for his own poetry. Few books are essentials, but this is one of them, a certified desert-island book for poets and lovers of poetry.