The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems

Simic, Charles

ISBN 10: 0151985758 / ISBN 13: 9780151985753

Published by Harcourt Brace, 1985

About this Item

74p. Stated first edition with number line reading "A B C D E." Previous owner's sticker bookplate present on upper edge of front fly. One small checkmark penned on other works page. Moderate foxing present on endpapers and text-block. Interior is otherwise unmarked on warm pages. Binding is firm, hinges are securely attached. Peach paper boards are pointed and bright. Orange jacket is unclipped and protected in mylar with a faintly sunned spine and minimal wear.

Seller Inventory # 115436

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace
• Publication Date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151985758
• ISBN 13: 9780151985753
• Binding: 8vo Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • POETRY

About this title

Synopsis

Words plus words relate the poet's reaction to anything; for example, his secret identity: the room is empty, and the window is open

Reviews

These 67 prose poems could be from Hamlet's writing tablet: investigating madness, they search for truth. Poet, translator, winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, Simic tries to make sense of a world that like "the old river . . . in its confusion sometimes forgets and flows backwards." Ancestors undergo mysterious "dark and evil days" (a man exchanges clothes with a dog, heaven is full of "little shrunken deaf ears instead of stars") that test their sanity. From the best of these sophisticated fables of trial by ordeal, wry intensity flashes. On "the verge of understanding," "in a forest of question marks," Simic's work, mingling Rimbaud and Socrates, startles us into meditation.
- Frank Allen, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.