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Master Of Disguises (2010)

by Charles Simic(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0547397097 (ISBN13: 9780547397092)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: Master of Disguises by Charles SimicPublished by Houghton /Mifflin HarcourtISBN 978-0-547-39709-2Master of Disguises is Simic’s first volume of poetry since he served as poet laureate of the United States in 2007-2008. Charles Simic is a literary artist. His poems paint images that walk a thin line between innocence and guilt, between what one struggles to remember and what he desperately wants to forget, and between what is truth and what is myth.The opening poem, The Invisible One, tells of a child kept for years in a closet by his crazy parents on a street you walked often. In Nineteen Thirty-eight, a poem about the day Simic was born, we learn it was the year the Nazis marched into Vienna. And in Dead Season, you are transported to a landscape with somber skies t... morehat must have fallen in love with a story by Edgar Allan Poe.Intrigued? I thought so. These 52 poems won’t disappoint.This volume of poetry was purchased at an independent local bookseller, Chop Suey Books. 804-422-8066.Hope Whitby
review 2: I like these poems, but I didn't love them. Simic has a darkness about him that I admire only because he exposes it honestly in surprising ways, like the line in "Puppet Maker" in which a daughter molesting father suddenly makes an appearance. Simic's poems are immediately recognizable as his: the almost constant political background noise, the dark wit, the frequently bizarre (and sometimes inexplicable) turn of phrase. It's just that I don't always like the poems. It's that plain and simple. I think Simic is frequently as interested in ideas as much as moments; I'm not. The best line in the book comes when Simic is describing the home of the local mailman who lost his son in a recent war, "canned laughter in the empty house/like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse."Postscript...I've re-visited these poems a few days after finishing the book and they're resonating with me more now. The poems in Part III are really quite good and it was those I went back to over and over. I subsequently added a star as well. less

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