Walking the Black Cat

Rating:
Summary: Contemporary, Thoughtful, Disturbing, and Refreshing
Review: Blue collar poetry. Subtle and haunting, Charles Simic sets out, one rainy, Sunday afternoon, to take the innards out of life, and play with them as a child would play with an Erector Set. Very satisfying and original

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous.
Review: Charles Simic, Walking the Black Cat (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1996)

Pulitzer Prizewinning author Charles Simic is to dada what Clayton Eshleman is to surrealism; he's pretty much the sole light keeping it alive in the world of poetry in the present day. Simic, a hardcore imagist, is wonderfully precise in his use of concrete detail, which he then pulls completely out of the realm of reality by juxtaposing things which have no business being next to one another. Walking the Black Cat, a finalist for the National Book Award, is often considered one of Simic's finest works, and justly. There is much here to be enjoyed, mulled over, surprised at, and delighted with, and very little that dips below the level of brilliant. If you've never discovered the Joy of Simic, this is a fantastic place to start. ****