Title:
The life of images : selected prose / Charles Simic.
Author:
Simic, Charles, 1938- author.
Publication Information:
New York : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
c2015.
Call Number:
PS3569.I4725 A6 2017
Abstract:
A collection of new and selected essays by the Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Poet Laureate. In addition to being one of America's most famous and commended poets, Charles Simic is a prolific and talented essayist. The Life of Images brings together his best prose work written over twenty-five years. A blend of the straightforward, the wry, and the hopeful, the essays in The Life of Images explore subjects ranging from literary criticism to philosophy, photography to Simic's childhood in a war-torn country. Culled from five collections, each work demonstrates the qualities that make Simic's poetry so brilliant yet accessible. Whether he is revealing the influence of literature on his childhood development, pondering the relationship between food and comfort, or elegizing the pull to return to a homeland that no longer exists, the legendary poet shares his distinctive take on the world and offers an intimate look into his remarkable mind.
Edition:
First Ecco paperback edition.
ISBN:
9780062364739
Physical Description:
x, 338 pages ; 21 cm
Subject Term:
Contents:
From Wonderful words, silent truth. Why I like certain poems more than others -- Reading philosophy at night -- Chinese boxes and puppet theaters -- Notes on poetry and philosophy -- From The unemployed fortune-teller. The flute player in the pit -- Food and happiness -- The little Venus of the Eskimos -- Fried sausage -- Elegy in a spider's web -- Shop, Le Bacarès -- No cure for the blues -- From Orphan factory. Charles the obscure -- In praise of invective -- Orphan factory -- The trouble with poetry -- Cut the comedy -- The poetry of village idiots -- Fearful paradise -- Night sky -- From The metaphysician in the dark. In praise of folly -- The devil is a poet -- The power of ambiguity -- Buster Keaton -- Poetry and history -- The romance of sausages -- Poetry : the art of memory -- Stargazing in the cinema : on Joseph Cornell -- Literature and the Gods : Roberto Calasso -- From Memory piano. Saul Steinberg -- The singing Simics -- Tsvetaeva : the tragic life -- Adam's umbrella -- From The renegade. The renegade -- Reading about utopia in New York City -- Salvation through laughter -- The life of images -- The powers of invention -- Uncollected. The true adventures of Franz Kafka's cage -- My secret -- Oh, what a lovely war! -- Insomnia's philosopher.
Uniform Title:
Works. Selections (2015)
Personal Author:
Subject:
