The Book of Gods and Devils

Loneliness, loss, sadness, and mystery mark this wonderful volume of forty-nine poems by Charles Simic, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and praised as “one of the truly imaginative writers of our time” by the Los Angeles Times.

In these poems, the ordinary world is tilted just enough to reveal the surreal lurking beneath the surface—

• Surrealist Poetry: Experience a New York City where saints and devils share the subway, a spider’s web holds cosmic meaning, and a man without shoes might be a fencing master.
• The Immigrant Experience: Explore the profound ache of exile and the ghosts of a European past that haunt the streets of America.
• Philosophical Depth: Grapple with big questions in small moments, from the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas found on a park bench to the meditations of Death as a quiet philosopher.
• Memory and Loss: Follow fragmented memories back to a child’s suit in a dusty window, a lost house key, and the “little pins” of recollection that prickle long after the moment has passed.

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.