Come Closer and Listen: New Poems

(Paperback)

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An insightful and haunting new collection from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic

Irreverent and sly, observant and keenly imagined, Come Closer and Listen is the latest work from one of our most beloved poets. With his trademark sense of humor, open-hearted empathy, and perceptive vision, Charles Simic roots his poetry in the ordinary world while still taking in the wide sweep of the human experience.

From poems pithy, wry, and cuttingTimethat murderer/that no has caught yetto his layered reflections on everything from love to grief to the wonders of nature, from the story of St. Sebastian to that of a couple weeding side by side, Simics workcontinues to reveal to us an unmistakable voice in modern poetry. An innovator in form and a chronicler of both our interior lives and the people we are in the world, Simic remains one of our most important and lasting voices on the page.

Reviews

Simic...has always challenged and delighted his audience with writing that is beautiful and surreal and forces people to consider the validity of their own perceptions. Washington Post One of our finest poets... singularly engaging, eminently sane... New York Review of Books His poetry is comic and elegiac in equal measure. It has an Old World sensibilitythat he pins to a New World lightness of heart. Dwight Garner, New York Times

Author Bio

Charles Simic, poet, essayist, and translator, was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 and immigrated to the United States in 1954. Since 1967, he has published twenty books of his own poetry, including his most recent collection, New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012, in addition to a memoir and numerous books of translations for which he has received many literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, the Griffin Prize, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. Simic is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and in 2007 was chosen as poet laureate of the United States. He is emeritus professor of the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught since 1973, and is distinguished visiting writer at New York University.