SOURCE: “Poems Magical, Poems Mordant,” in Nation, Vol. 236, No. 10, March 12, 1983, pp. 314-15.

In the following excerpted review, Bennett admires the spareness and clarity of poems that make up Austerities.

[In Austerities] Charles Simic is a story teller, but his tales are mordant. “Rosalia” begins typically:

An especially forlorn human specimen Answers a marriage-ad On a street of compulsory misfortune, One drizzly November afternoon … 

They are set in landscapes—general cityscapes—despoiled by history (“From Tooth Crowned With Gold,” “Punch Minus Judy”), and in a climate almost unremittingly harsh. Scarcity is the rule and practically everyone practices “austerities” of some sort. Even on those rare occasions of abundance, the results are not precisely satisfying:

We ate so well after the funeral In that shack by the town dump; Fingers dripping with barbecue sauce and grease Making the quick sign of the cross In the cramped, smoke-filled living room … 

(“Antediluvian...