Jackstraws

“A master of the surreal, Simic packs his poems full of horror movies, bleak jokes, savage ironies and the things an insomniac notices on the ceiling.” —People
A New York Times Notable Book
In this collection of sixty-two poems Charles Simic paints exquisite and shattering word pictures that lend meaning to a chaotic world populated by insects, bridal veils, pallbearers, TV sets, parrots, and a finely detailed dragonfly. Suffused with hope yet unafraid to mock his own credulity, Simic’s searing metaphors unite the solemn with the absurd. His raindrops listen to each other fall and collect memories; his wildflowers are drunk with kissing the red-hot breezes; and his God is a Mr. Know-it-all, a wheeler-dealer, a wire-puller. In this lyrical gathering, Simic continues to startle his fans with the powerful and surprising images that are his trademark—slangy images of the ethereal, fantastic visions of the everyday, foreign scenes of the all-American—and moments full of humor and full of heartache.
“In Jackstraws, Simic snatches profundities from the air around him, like so many flies to some wanton boy.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Irreverent and heartstopping.” —Vanity Fair
“These poems are like self-developing Polaroids, in which a scene, gradually assembling itself out of unexplained images, suddenly clicks into a recognizable whole.” —The New York Review of Books
“Charles Simic is a contemporary master of the short lyric [who] makes an art out of clarity of vision . . . Simic is as good as it gets. And as different.” —Charles Wright, The American Poet