Come Closer and Listen

Starred review from June 1, 2019

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Simic, who was born in 1938 and spent his first 11 years in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, remembers his past in these poems of old age. Reflective and melancholic, with references to people leaving and lights flashing in the distance, the poems evoke a sense of loss--either present or impending. They include everything from a "Ghost Ship" vanishing to bombings ("A great city lay reduced to ruins") to decay ("the seedy block/ Of small dimly-lit shops"). Some of the poems are suggestive of death, with haunting metaphors as in a truck stop where death is "the pale thief...Sipping coffee in the rear booth/ Of an all-night diner." Other poems openly discuss it: "Is Charles Simic afraid of death?/ Yes...." Running through these mostly free-verse pieces are ironic references to prayer and God, as in God explaining why He's silent, the narrator going to the dump when others go to church, or lines from "In My Church," one of the best poems here, ending with this powerful image (where the your refers to God): "One or two candles still burning/ In your terrifying absence/ Under the dark and majestic dome." VERDICT For all libraries.--C. Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 24, 2019
Pulitzer-winner Simic (The Lunatic) has mastered a deceptively simple and straightforward lyric style that has served him well over two dozen books of poetry. His latest is no different in this regard, noting (and plucking) “the cunning threads/ By which our lives are rigged.” Simic’s world is a quiet one, though its quietness is haunted with echoes of wars, scams, loves had and lost, and a wry smile that seems to know the score no matter how dark the world gets. “They say Death/ Hid his face in his hood/ So he could smile too,” Simic writes, “I like the black keys better/ I like the lights turned down low/ I like women who drink alone/ While I hunch over the piano/ Looking for all the pretty notes.” These poems are often slyly funny, emotionally generous, and wrapped up in the lives of the people they depict—children at play, men and women in private moments, mythical figures and deities outside their myths. Some of the new poems, such as “The American Dream,” arrive as premade classics, evoking times past in a stilted, twilit present and reminding readers of Simic’s keen eye for the restless, the absurd, and the enduringly human.

June 1, 2019
Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. poet laureate Simic presents another striking poetry collection meticulously centered on his signature themes of nature, observations of ordinary events, and the leveling emotions related to death. Birds play a steady role in these sparse poems, as in Some Birds Chirp, which takes an amusing look at how a creature with such a small brain makes sense of the world: Darting and bickering nonstop. In his jest, Simic seems to be making a larger statement about humanity. His wit is also evident in more serious lines about death: You'll be like a new kid in school / Afraid to look at the teacher / While struggling to understand / What they are saying / About this here nothing . When the poems venture into the everyday, there seems to be an indirect solemn oath to protect specific moments, such as a couple gardening together or a last picnic before autumn, captured in memory. Simic makes sacred the language of deep realizations by declining to use exaggerated embellishment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)