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Simic is the master of poetic dislocation; he finds beauty amid urgency and ruin, and his brand of surrealism has a special charm. It consists of the melancholy of survival, the haunting melodies of World War II, the consciousness of being a foreigner in New York, young, hungry, lonely, in love with jazz, and too happy to be alive to worry about the hole in his pocket where a few coins once rang. This particular book is essential reading for anyone who would understand the prose poem in its recent incarnation as an American poetic institution.
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This is one of the best books of poetry that has been published in the past 15 years. The strength of this Pulitzer Prize-winning volume comes from its deceptive simplicity. The prose poems are easy and fun to read, but Simic can get very strange very fast. One poem starts, "We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap." On one level, a delightful line. On another level, it is a disturbing image. In the same poem, as the mouse nibbles on his ear, the mouse whispers, "These are dark and evil days." The juxtaposition of the levity and the darkness creates a landmark volume of poetry, truly an essential book.
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" I was stolen by the gypsies. My parents stole me right back. Then the gypsies stole me again. This went on for some time. One minute I was in the caravan suckling the dark teat of my new mother, the next I sat at the long dining room table eating my breakfast with a silver spoon.
It was the first day of spring. One of my fathers was singing in the bathtub; the other one was painting a live sparrow the colors of a tropical bird."
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