Unending Blues: Poems

Whether he draws for inspiration on American blues, Serbian folktales, or Greek myths, Simic's words have a way of their own. Each of these forty-four poems is a powerful mixture of concrete images. Each records the reality and myth of the world around us-and in us. "Short, perfectly shaped, Simic's poems float past like feathers, turning one way, then another" (Village Voice).

What happens when the line between dream and reality dissolves?

• Modern American Poetry: Poems that capture the grit of American life, from dying mill towns to city avenues, viewed through a uniquely perceptive lens.
• Myth and Folklore: Drawing on American blues, Serbian folktales, and Greek myths, Simic creates a landscape that is both familiar and strangely new.
• Witty and Imaginative: Discover a voice full of dark humor and unexpected turns, where morticians stroll with angels and history has a cruel sense of irony.
• Striking Imagery: Each poem builds a world from powerful, concrete images—a fine-tooth comb in a judge’s pocket, a fly on a lover’s nose, a hearse with trash cans in the back.

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.