Review
"Establishes Simic once again as a reliable master of his particular, melancholy, wry mode." (Publishers Weekly)
"These poems show a master craftsman at work." (Library Journal)
"Simic, original and engaging, keeps us on our toes, guessing, questioning and looking at the world in a new way." (Booklist)
From the Inside Flap
"Charles Simic's writing comes dancing out on the balls of its feet, colloquially fit as a fiddle, a sparring partner for the world." --Seamus Heaney
Once again Charles Simic demonstrates his wit, his moral acuity, and extraordinary use of imagery. MY NOISELESS ENTOURAGE is haunted by marooned, wordless individuals, but also by a sense of indecipherable, constant chatter, the murmuring on the other side of the wall. Simic sheds light on the slow, distracted quality of rural life, and the paranoia, the suspicions of city-dwellers. An old man sits in his backyard with a rope in his hand. A flock of spooked starlings seem to have heard something no one else has. The lodger no one has ever seen, drawing her bath upstairs. The poet as a dog, growling at something out there he cannot bring himself to name.
A brilliant new collection by one of the most important poets of our time.
From the Back Cover
Praise for Charles Simic
"Few contemporary poets have been as influential-- or as inimitable-- as Charles Simic." --The New York Times Book Review
"He has infused American poetry with the freshest and most original style and imagery since e.e. cummings." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"His poems are crowded with uncanny presence, which he challenges with flirtatious directness." --The New Yorker
"There are few poets writing in America today who share his lavish appetite for the bizarre, his inexhaustible repertoire of indelible characters and gestures...Simic is perhaps our most disquieting muse." --Harvard Review
About the Author
CHARLES SIMIC is the author of fourteen books of poetry, including The World Doesn't End, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in New Hampshire.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
DESCRIPTION OF A LOST THING
It never had a name,
Nor do I remember how I found it.
I carried it in my pocket
Like a lost button
Except it wasn't a button.
Horror movies,
All-night cafeterias,
Dark barrooms
And poolhalls,
On rain-slicked streets.
It led a quiet, unremarkable existence
Like a shadow in a dream,
An angel on a pin,
And then it vanished.
The years passed with their row
Of nameless stations,
Till somebody told me this is it!
And fool that I was,
I got off on an empty platform
With no town in sight.
SHADING EXERCISE
This street could use a bit of shade
And the same goes for that small boy
Playing alone in the sun,
A shadow to dart after him like a black kitten.
His parents sit in a room with shades drawn.
The stairs to the cellar
Are hardly used any more
Except for an occasional prowler.
Like a troop of traveling actors dressed to play Hamlet,
The evening shadows come.
They spend their days hidden in the trees
Outside the old courthouse.
Now comes the hard part:
What to do with the stones in the graveyard?
The sun doesn't care for ambiguities,
But I do. I open my door and let them in.
Copyright © 2005 by Charles Simic
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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