The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems

by Charles Simic

Overview

Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his brilliant poetic imagery; his social, political, and moral alertness; his uncanny ability to make the ordinary extraordinary; and not least, a sardonic humor all his own. Gathering much of his material from the seemingly mundane minutia of contemporary American culture, Simic matches meditations on spiritual concerns and the weight of history with a nimble wit, shifting effortlessly to moments of clear vision and intense poetic revelation.
The poems in this collection—spanning two decades of his work—present a rich and varied survey of a remarkable lyrical journey.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544313194
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/03/2006
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Charles Simic was a poet, essayist, and translator who was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 and immigrated to the United States in 1954. He published more than twenty books of poetry, in addition to a memoir and numerous books of translations for which he received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. In 2007, he served as poet laureate of the United States. He was a distinguished visiting writer at New York University and professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught since 1973. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-four.

Editorial Reviews

This poet's repetitiveness is a complicated matter, because it's intimately related to the themes around which his poetry revolves. Simic can't quite believe in anything, and he can't quite not believe in anything; as a result, his irony and his romanticism can grind against each other in a tortured stasis.— David Orr

The New York Times

With his 1989 collection The World Doesn't End a Pulitzer winner, and 1996's Walking the Black Cat an NBA finalist, Simic has achieved major recognition for his wryly acerbic meditations and send-ups; this selection from his last eight books (excluding the prose poems of The World Doesn't End), matched with 19 new poems, should pave the way for more. On re-reading work that is approaching its 20th year in print, readers will find that Simic's signature quatrains and other free verse stanzas retain their forceful mix of joy, wit and melancholy: "How do you like that?/ I said to no one./ How do you like that?/ I said it again today upon walking." The new poems, most no more than a page long, include the neo-Yeatsian foreboding of "Grayheaded School Children" ("Their dead fathers shuffle past them/ On their way to the kitchen"); a creepy, Raymond Carver-esque "Empty Barbershop" ("The invisible barber's greasy fingers/ Making your hair stand straight up"); and, near the end, "The Hearse": "Pulled by a teenage Jesus already carrying his cross/ Pulled by your first love/ Pulled by every dog you ever had/ Pulled by the fly whose legs you plucked." The table of contents reveals the book's chronological organization, and the books from which the poems are taken. But refreshingly, there are no section breaks within the text, allowing readers to follow the unbroken arc of this poet's skeptical, humane meditations without interruption. It's an opportunity that will be exploited even by fans who own multiple Simic collections. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Always the poetic master, the Simic we meet in these poems (originally published in books from 1986 to the present) is no longer one who would, to quote one of his very early poems, "Go inside a stone"-and presumably shut the rest of the world out. He is older, wiser, more sedate. As tensions have risen in the former Yugoslavia, where he was born, and the world at large, his work has taken on a political urgency while still clutching its surrealist core. Here we find "The City," with "at least one crucified at every corner." In short, terse, sardonic poems, we meet troubled men and women, be they ghosts, the homeless, the lonely, or those who leave behind broken dolls and toy soldiers. The poet boldly states, "I believe in the soul; so far/ it hasn't made much difference." Luckily for readers, these poems do make a difference, rising Chagall-like above the fears and desolation of which they speak. If there were ever a poet whose work was needed in these difficult times, it would be Simic. An important purchase for all libraries.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

PRAISE FOR 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 contemporary poets have been as influential—or as inimitable—as Charles Simic."—The New York Times Book Review
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From the Publisher