Voice at 3:00 A.m.
Description
Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his brilliant poetic imagery; his social, political, and moral alertness; his uncanny ability to make the ordinary extraordinary; and not least, the sardonic humor all his own. Gathering much of his material from the seemingly mundane minutiae of contemporary American culture, Simic matches meditations on spiritual concerns and the weight of history with a nimble wit, shifting effortlessly to moments of clear vision and intense poetic revelation.
Chosen as one of the New York Library's 25 Books to Remember for 2003, The Voice at 3:00 A. M. was also nominated for a National Book Award. The recipient of many prizes, Simic most recently received Canada's Griffin Prize. The poems in this collection--spanning two decades of his work--present a rich and varied survey of a remarkable lyrical journey.
In the Street
Beauty, dark goddess,
We met and parted
As though we parted not.
Like two stopped watches
In a dusty store window,
One golden morning of time.
This selected volume showcases the prizewinning work of a modern master, where the everyday reveals its startling, secret life.
- Sardonic Humor: Simic’s signature wit finds the absurdity in everything from soap operas to conversations with the devil, delivered with a wry, knowing smirk.
- Surreal Imagery: Experience a world where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, where blind beggars see the truth and stopped watches mark a golden morning of time.
- Philosophical Poetry: These poems grapple with the big questions—time, memory, God, and nothingness—not in a lecture hall, but in a dusty store window.
- The Weight of History: From the wars of the 20th century to the quiet dread of the present, these verses explore how history lives on in the smallest details of contemporary American life.
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Person
Charles Simic was a poet, essayist, and translator who was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 and immigrated to the United States in 1954. He published more than twenty books of poetry, in addition to a memoir and numerous books of translations for which he received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. In 2007, he served as poet laureate of the United States. He was a distinguished visiting writer at New York University and professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught since 1973. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-four.