Customer Reviews

Dismantling the Silence: Poems

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Dismantling the Silence is an extraordinary collection of poems. It contains many of Charles Simic's most famous poems: "Butcher Shop", "Fear", "Bestiary for the Fingers of my Right Hand", as well as "Stone", "Fork", and a number of other poems about objects. And while a title like "Eating Out the Angel of Death" hints at the irony that would overwhelm Simic's poetry in subsequent collections, what makes the volume unique is the tone--meditative, serious, haunted,--yet playful. The poems are filled with surprise, but not wacky surrealism. I often enjoy Simic's humor, but I sometimes feel that--like James Tate--he has allowed humor to displace other starker revelations. But in this collection Simic's poetry seems to be informed by the horrors of war he glimpsed in Europe as a boy. It is also filled with wonder at the strangeness of existence, which is captured this two line poem:

THE WIND

Touching me, you touch

The country that has exiled you.

If you are a fan of Simic's poetry, you will enjoy this collection. If you think that Simic's poetry is not sufficiently serious, you should read this collection and see why he is regarded as an important American poet.

This book remains one of my favorite collections of poems. It is good to begin with this book and read his next book...to view his work in sequence is like reading a wonderfully visual novel.