Jackstraws: Poems (Harvest Book) - Softcover

Simic, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156010984 ISBN 13: 9780156010986

Publisher: Roundhouse Publishing Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

In this new collection of sixty-two poems Charles Simic paints exquisite and shattering word pictures that lend meaning to a chaotic world populated by insects, bridal veils, pallbearers, TV sets, parrots, and a finely detailed dragonfly. Suffused with hope yet unafraid to mock his own credulity, Simic's searing metaphors unite the solemn with the absurd. His raindrops listen to each other fall and collect memories; his wildflowers are drunk with kissing the red-hot breezes; and his God is a Mr. Know-it-all, a wheeler-dealer, a wire-puller. In this latest lyrical gathering, Simic continues to startle his fans with the powerful and surprising images that are his trademark-slangy images of the ethereal, fantastic visions of the everyday, foreign scenes of the all-American-and moments full of humor and full of heartache.

About this title

Review:

"A master of the surreal, Simic packs his poems full of horror movies, bleak jokes, savage ironies and the things an insomniac notices on the ceiling. . . . A gem."-People
"Charles Simic is a contemporary master of the short lyric [who] makes an art out of clarity of vision."-The American Poet, Spring 1999
"These poems are like self-developing Polaroids, in which a scene, gradually assembling itself out of unexplained images, suddenly clicks into a recognizable whole."-The New York Review of Books

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: Roundhouse Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0156010984
• ISBN 13: 9780156010986
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96