Review by Booklist Review
From the time of his initial book, published in 1967, until now, Simic's career has been characterized by chance taking. His ninth collection, a group of prose poems, is further evidence of the author's verve. Full of spunk and sass, the book's 67 pieces attempt to redefine human experience and to reveal in the process how odd, even absurd, the everyday is. In one prose poem, a student working on algebra problems at a blackboard is haunted by the equations' X's and imagines them to be crosses in a graveyard at night. In another, Hermes, messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, is metamorphosed into a twentieth-century mailman who, like his ancient counterpart, steals the letters he is to deliver. In others, a week- long vacation is spent in a glass paperweight, people are kidnapped by UFOs, plants speak to their mirrored reflections, and police dogs are dressed up as children. Freewheeling and humorous, Simic's latest is a much-needed reprieve from the tedium that marks far too many current and ``safe'' volumes of U.S. poetry. Unreservedly recommended. -- Jim Elledge
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
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. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
