Master of Disguises »

CHARLES SIMIC was born in Belgrade and emigrated to the United States in 1954. He is the author of many books of poetry and prose. Among other honors, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and served as the Poet Laureate of the United States in 2007-2008.

In his first volume of poetry since his tenure as poet laureate, Charles Simic shows he is at the height of his poetic powers. These new poems mine the rich strain of inscrutability in ordinary life, until it is hard to know what is innocent and what ominous. There is something about his work that continues to be crystal clear and yet deeply weighted with violence and mystery. Reading it is like going undercover. The face of a girl carrying a white dress from the cleaners with her eyes half-closed. The Adam & Evie Tanning Salon at night. A sparrow on crutches. A rubber duck in a shooting gallery on a Sunday morning. And someone in a tree swing, too old to be swinging and to be wearing no clothes at all, blowing a toy trumpet at the sky.

Publishers Weekly

This 20th collection from the former U.S. poet laureate (My Noiseless Entourage) departs only by degrees from his poems of earlier decades--but it could just be his best book. Like most of Simic's work, these new poems end up short and sad, setting mysterious, wry, even Kafkaesque, scenes in which nobody gets what anyone wants: "A dark little country store full of gravediggers' children buying candy./ (That's how we looked that night.)" Simic served as laureate in the last years of the Bush administration, and some of his new poems may reflect that experience: they attack, with a pessimistic asperity, callous military officers, bloodthirsty states and unnecessary wars, along with a weary or cynical America: "the TV is on in the living room,/ Canned laughter in the empty house/ Like the sound of beer cans tied to a coffin." Simic alludes quietly to the war-ravaged Serbia he fled as a child. But the "ragged puppets" who populate Simic's stanzas are not always so foredoomed: in an 11-part sequence called "The Invisible," Simic modulates into a restrained and deeply moving lyric lament, admiring a dragonfly for his clear wings, a crow who was once "a professor of philosophy," and a "Bird comforting the afflicted/ With your song." (Oct.)

I

The Invisible One 3

Master of Disguises 4

Nineteen Thirty-eight 5

Scenes of Old Life 6

The Elusive Something 7

Blind Man Feeding Pigeons 8

Preachers Warn 9

Worriers Anonymous 10

Scribbled in the Dark 11

Old Man 12

Among the Exiles 13

Wildflowers 14

Dogs Pity Their Masters 15

Nancy Jane 16

At Adam and Evie Tanning Salon 17

Dark is the Night 18

II

Old Soldier 21

Carrying On Like a Crow 22

The Absent One 23

Driving Home 24

The Sparrow 25

Same-as-Ever 26

Father in Heaven 27

Sightseeing in the Capital 28

Daughters of Memory 29

Private Miseries 30

The End of the Parade 31

Our Salvation 32

Solitude 33

In That Big House 34

Puppet Maker 35

Sad as a Ship in a Bottle 36

Graveside Oration 37

III

Streets Paved with Gold 41

Darkened Chessboard 42

Double Feature 43

The Boardwalks are Deserted 44

Little Boat, Take Care 45

Dead Season 46

Summer Storm 47

The Melon 48

The Lovers 49

Bright and Early 50

The Empress 51

In My Long Night 52

Trees in the Yard 53

The Toad 54

Summer Light 55

The Tree No One Visits 56

Keep This to Yourself 57

IV

The Invisible 61

V

And Who Are You, Sir? 75