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3.0 

Scribbled in the Dark

By Charles Simic
Scribbled in the Dark by Charles Simic digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate, a collection of elegiac, irreverent new poems—an American master at the height of his talent

 The latest volume of poetry from Charles Simic hums with the liveliness of the writer’s pen. Scribbled in the Dark brings the poet’s signature sardonic sense of humor, piercing social insight, and haunting lyricism to diverse and richly imagined landscapes. Peopled by policemen, presidents, kids in Halloween masks, a fortune-teller, a fly on the wall of the poet’s kitchen; set on crowded New York streets, on park benches, and under darkened skies; the pages within toy with the end of the world and its infinity. Simic continues to be an imitable voice in modern American poetry and one of its finest chroniclers of the human condition.

22 Reviews

3.0
“Ummm, so yeah, turns out being a Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate does not mean I will automatically enjoy a person's poetry. For the vast majority of these poems my main thoughts were "okay, Eeyore" and "emo". Simic would be trucking along with some interesting imagery and then boom, dark moment, like he thought every poem needed one, or it wouldn't be punchy enough. If he wandered into a vulnerable, melancholy moment, I think I could follow, but it didn't feel genuine, it felt consistently artificial. Just please tell me that the general (I assume more positive than mine) opinion has not been formed about this writing based on the idea that he's complex because he adds those moments to almost every single poem. Alas, the few that didn't have it felt banal, which adds to my unflattering theory: a mildly engaging word picture by itself doesn't make for a poem with much impact so he inserts a darker moment, and from this the reader is to determine that he is deep. Nope, not for me. 🤷🏼‍♂️ On the plus side, not convoluted/incomprehensible, which is the challenge I regularly have with poetry collections that makes me hesitate to provide a firm opinion. In this case, sorry Simic, I'm really sure about how I feel. 💁🏼‍♂️”

About Charles Simic

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.

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