No land in sight Poems
Book - 2022
From one of America's most beloved poets, a piercing new collection reflecting on the characters and encounters that haunt us through this life and into the next. Leading us into a city stirring with gravediggers and beggars, lovers and dogs, Charles Simic returns with a brilliant collection full of his singular wit, dark humor, and tenderheartedness. In poems that are often as spare as they are monumental, he captures the fleeting moments of modern life--peering inside pawnshop windows, brushing shoulders with strangers on the street, and walking familiar cemetery rows--to uncover all the beauty and worry hiding in plain sight. As the poet reflects on a lifetime's worth of pleasure and loss, he recalls instances when he "mad...e excuses and hurried away," and considers the way memory always trails just behind. No Land in Sight is a testament to all we leave in our wake and, simultaneously, all we hang on to: the passing minutes, the evening's stillness, and the many lives we inhabit in dim thresholds and bright mornings alike.
- 1.
- Fate
- All But Invisible
- Dreaming or Awake?
- I Watched the Wind
- Winter Mornings
- Everyone Is Running Late
- The Music Box
- My Possessions
- My City
- Paradise Lounge
- November
- On This Street
- Where Do My Gallows Stand?
- Dear Lord
- The Mirage
- Pawnshop Window
- Object Matrimony
- Could That Be Me?
- 2.
- There Is Nothing Quieter
- The Big Lie
- Family Graveyard
- The Mystery
- A Huge Old Tree
- On York Beach
- One Summer
- Neighborhood Dogs
- An Old Woman
- The Poor Man's Horse
- Sunrise
- When in the Mood
- Two Widows
- Snapshot
- Adorable Bed
- Windy Day
- Crickets
- Pyramids and Sphinxes
- 3.
- Looking for Trouble
- Weather Forecast
- Walt Whitman
- Big Shot
- The Young Lady Said
- Memories of Hell
- Circus
- On the Way to Binghamton
- My Doubles
- In This Heavy Traffic
- The Funeral
- Left Out of the Bible
- I've Been Thinking Of
- In the Amusement Park
- Tango
- The Insomniac
- Hoot, Little Owl
- First Thing in the Morning
- 4.
- Some Folks Out Late
- The Crow
- Come Spring
- Cassiopeia
- Just So You Know
- I Never Forget Anything
- Night Thoughts
- Celebrity Sightings
- In the Lockdown
- Rainy Evening
- El Magnifico
- Summer Dusk
- My Love
- Dark Window
- Hot Summer Night
- All Over the World Now
- My Life Is as Real as Yours
- On Grove Street
- The Wind Has Died
- Acknowledgements