Walking the Black Cat: Poems - Softcover

Simic, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 015600481X ISBN 13: 9780156004817

Publisher: Thomson Learning, 1996

Synopsis

Hamlet's ghost wandering the halls of a Vegas motel, a street corner ventriloquist using passersby as dummies, and Jesus panhandling in a weed-infested Eden are just a few of the startling conceits Simic unleashes in this collection. "Few contemporary poets have been as influential-or inimitable-as Charles Simic" (New York Times Book Review).

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In this latest collection of poems, Charles Simic, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, brings us startling new visions of the haunted landscape that has been his oeuvre, where the surreal and the mundane, the sacred and profane, are indistinguishable, a world where "everything is teetering on the edge of everything/With a polite smile". A man waits at a bus stop for the love of his life, a woman (Lady Luck?) he's never met. The world's greatest ventriloquist who sits on a street corner uses passersby as dummies and speaks through us all. Hamlet's ghost walks the hallways of a Vegas motel. Sunlight streams through a windowpane of fire. Mary Magdalene cruises Santa Monica Boulevard. Flies from a slaughterhouse leave bloody tracks across the pages of a book. Jesus panhandles in a weed-infested Eden.

About the Author:

CHARLES SIMIC was born in Belgrade and emigrated to the United States in 1954. He is the author of many books of poetry and prose. Among other honors, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and served as the Poet Laureate of the United States in 2007-2008.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomson Learning
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 015600481X
• ISBN 13: 9780156004817
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 83