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    Confessions of a Poet Laureate

    Author Charles Simic
    Ebook
    New York Review Books
    On sale Dec 28, 2010 | 48 Pages | 9781590174784
    Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

    A NEW YORK REVIEW E-BOOK ORIGINAL
    As former U.S. poet laureate Charles Simic has said, the secret to our identities lies not in grand events, but in the parentheses between events--and in these brief essays, we get a taste of this great poet's parenthetical observations and recollections. He takes us from his rattling house on a stormy New Hampshire night, to a park bench in Washington Square where two old men sit
    discussing the women they've known, to a business convention in Topeka where he reads a poem, to the vanished subterranean jazz clubs of old New York, and beyond. Part autobiographical fragment, part waking dream, these pieces are marked by Simic's characteristic wit, audacity, and awe before life's strangeness.

    Contents include:
    --Reminiscing about the Night Before
    --Strangers on a Train
    --Confessions of a Poet Laureate
    --The Blustering Blast
    --The Buster Keaton Cure
    --On Losing
    --On the Couch with Philip Roth, at the Morgue with Pol Pot
    Charles Simic (1938-2023) was a poet, essayist and translator. He has received many literary awards for his poems and his translations, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship. Simic was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2007, and was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000. He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995, and was the recipient of the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award by the Academy of American Poets.
    Charles Simic View titles by Charles Simic
    "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

    "Few poets have been as influential--or as inimitable--as Charles Simic."--The New
    York Times Book Review

    "Simic's is a unique and necessary voice in American poetry, one that concisely articulates
    a profound aversion to simplistic answers and bland comforts. Simic's brooding lyrics
    are eloquently spare, like bare tree limbs in moonlight or a tenement fire escape bathed in
    neon." --Booklist

    "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." --People

    "A master craftsman..." --Library Journal

    ". . . Simic brings off a masterfully casual beauty, whether discussing the creation of
    poetry and the poet's social role, praising food and the blues, or relating the travails of
    youth." --Kirkus Reviews

    About

    A NEW YORK REVIEW E-BOOK ORIGINAL
    As former U.S. poet laureate Charles Simic has said, the secret to our identities lies not in grand events, but in the parentheses between events--and in these brief essays, we get a taste of this great poet's parenthetical observations and recollections. He takes us from his rattling house on a stormy New Hampshire night, to a park bench in Washington Square where two old men sit
    discussing the women they've known, to a business convention in Topeka where he reads a poem, to the vanished subterranean jazz clubs of old New York, and beyond. Part autobiographical fragment, part waking dream, these pieces are marked by Simic's characteristic wit, audacity, and awe before life's strangeness.

    Contents include:
    --Reminiscing about the Night Before
    --Strangers on a Train
    --Confessions of a Poet Laureate
    --The Blustering Blast
    --The Buster Keaton Cure
    --On Losing
    --On the Couch with Philip Roth, at the Morgue with Pol Pot

    Author

    Charles Simic (1938-2023) was a poet, essayist and translator. He has received many literary awards for his poems and his translations, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship. Simic was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2007, and was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000. He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995, and was the recipient of the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award by the Academy of American Poets.
    Charles Simic View titles by Charles Simic

    Praise

    "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

    "Few poets have been as influential--or as inimitable--as Charles Simic."--The New
    York Times Book Review

    "Simic's is a unique and necessary voice in American poetry, one that concisely articulates
    a profound aversion to simplistic answers and bland comforts. Simic's brooding lyrics
    are eloquently spare, like bare tree limbs in moonlight or a tenement fire escape bathed in
    neon." --Booklist

    "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." --People

    "A master craftsman..." --Library Journal

    ". . . Simic brings off a masterfully casual beauty, whether discussing the creation of
    poetry and the poet's social role, praising food and the blues, or relating the travails of
    youth." --Kirkus Reviews

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