Selected Early Poems

When this selection of Charles Simic's work first appeared, it was hailed as "easily the best volume of poetry published in 1985....[Simic] is one of the wisest poets of his generation, and one of the best." (The Georgia Review) For this new edition of his selected poems, Simic has added twenty-eight poems and extensively revised others, making this the most complete collection available of his early work. In the spare, haunting vision of these poems, the familiar takes on a disturbing, often sinister, presence. A fork "resembles a bird's foot / Worn around the cannibal's neck" and a bird's chirp is "Like a match flickering / In a new grave." Life's horrors--violence, hunger, poverty, illness--lurk unnervingly in the background. And yet, despite the horror, a sense of wonder pervades these poems, transforming the ordinary world into a mysterious place of unknowable forces. Classic displays of the economy and grace of Simic's work, these poems occupy an established place in American poetry.

Charles Simic is a poet, essayist, and translator. His 1990 collection The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and he has received numerous other literary honors. Born in Belgrade, Simic now lives in New Hampshire, where he teaches at the University of New Hampshire.