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by: Charles Simic
List Price: $14.00Amazon.com's Price: $11.20 You Save: $2.80 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780156030731
ISBN: 015603073X
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2006-03
Publisher: Harvest Books
Sales Rank: 141190
Studio: Harvest Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his brilliant poetic imagery; his social, political, and moral alertness; his uncanny ability to make the ordinary extraordinary; and not least, the sardonic humor all his own. Gathering much of his material from the seemingly mundane minutiae of contemporary American culture, Simic matches meditations on spiritual concerns and the weight of history with a nimble wit, shifting effortlessly to moments of clear vision and intense poetic revelation.
Chosen as one of the New York Library's 25 Books to Remember for 2003, The Voice at 3:00 A. M. was also nominated for a National Book Award. The recipient of many prizes, Simic most recently received Canada's Griffin Prize. The poems in this collection--spanning two decades of his work--present a rich and varied survey of a remarkable lyrical journey.
In the Street
Beauty, dark goddess,
We met and parted
As though we parted not.
Like two stopped watches
In a dusty store window,
One golden morning of time.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Vintage Simic
This book is primarily a selection of poems from Simic's books from Unending Blues (1986) through Jackstraws (1999) with 19 additional new poems. As such, it is an excellent volume to introduce Simic but scarce on new poems for his avid fans.
Simic's poems are interesting to analyze - so few traditional "poetic devices," so much reference to religion, philosophy and other tough issues, primarily in common-place language. Simic, however, makes this work in his surrealistic way. My ... Read More
Rating: - More, but not more... if that makes sense.
Charles Simic, The Voice at 3:00 A.M. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 2003)
Simic's latest collection is something of a shortcut, a "new and selected poems" that has all the cache of a band releasing "greatest hits, volume 3" with one new track to entice the fans to buy it. If you've already got the bulk of the books Simic released between 1986 (Unending Blues) and 1999 (Jackstraws), the question is whether you want to shell out the cash for the small section of new poems. My advice, wait ... Read More
Rating: - "History licked the corners of its bloody mouth."
One appeal of Simic's work is its deceptive ease: it appears lighter than it is, like Bob Dylan's lyrics although not as funny. To some extent Simic does this to clear room for his famed moralism, since these days the only way that people permit you to go holy on them is if you sucker them into it. He doesn't delve into deep shades of grey - lines like "And then there were no more/As we stood dazed in the burning city,/But, of course, they didn't film that" (in "Cameo Appearance") ... Read More
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