This section contains 228 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
I have not yet decided whether Charles Simic is America's great living surrealist poet, a children's writer, a religious writer, or simple-minded. My decision in this matter is irrelevant actually because, whatever he is, his poetry is cryptic and fascinating…. [One of his poems called Poem] contains all the elements which I admire in Simic's work. He begins the poem with his father writing and when he says he "writes in his coffin" the poem has been transferred into a metaphor perhaps for the poet himself…. Then Simic adds, "I, too, would get lost but there's his shadow / On the wall", and I start thinking the poet is writing about God, perhaps death…. This kind of poem you can turn inside out, make symbolic, make metaphoric, make religious, make aesthetic, and still have a beautiful cryptic little piece, written as if it were a folk poem or perhaps...
This section contains 228 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |