'Sixty Poems' delightfully accessible

SIXTY POEMS, by Charles Simic, Harcourt, 99 pages, $12, softcover.

Charles Simic, 70, a native of Yugoslavia and recently named to be Poet Laureate of the United States, is already a well-known poet. His poetry is wide-ranging, including social, political and moral insights, always with extraordinary wit. Some may think him eccentric, while others may be delighted that he is an especially accessible poet.

This collection of 60 poems is timed to coincide with his new national appointment, and so there is great variety here. He devotes one to the classic early 19th century romantic poet Percy Shelley, a contemporary of Keats and Byron, whose work he read "one rainy evening in New York City."

Simic read Shelley aloud, "In my atrocious Slavic accent, Saying the mellifluous verses From a battered, much-stained volume I had bought earlier that day In a second-hand bookstore on Fourth Avenue Run by an initiate of the occult masters."

Simic interpreted the poet speaking "of the everlasting universe Of things ... of gleams of a remoter world Which visit the soul in sleep ... Of a desert peopled by storms alone. ... " Then as Simic left a Chinese restaurant, he was approached by "a well-dressed man without any shoes" who asked him for money. "His eyes shone, he looked triumphant Like a fencing master Who had just struck a mortal blow."

Reading Shelley put Simic in an imaginative, fearful mood: "The yellowed volume of poetry With its Splendors and Glooms Which I studied by the light of storefronts: Drugstores and barbershops, Afraid of my small windowless room Cold as a tomb of an infant emperor."

In a dark but satirical poem called "The Big War," Simic remembers playing with toy soldiers as a child. "I used to lie on the floor For hours staring them in the eye. I remember them staring back at me in wonder."

He thought it strange that these figures stood "at attention Before a large, uncomprehending creature With a moustache made of milk." But eventually, the figures broke, and he found "wire inside their limbs, Inside their chests, but nothing in the heads!"

In "Empires," Simic remembers his grandmother ironing with the radio on, listening to "a monster" with "cheers and gun salutes" in the background. She told her grandson, "I could kill him with my bare hands."

But she didn't have to because he was "going to the devil any day now." Then leaning down she warned the little boy, "Don't go blabbering about this to anyone."

In "The Common Insects of North America," Simic talks about bumble bees, soldier bugs, Mormon crickets, hermit beetles, rat fleas and widow dragonflies, all found "Behind Joe's garage, in the tall weeds." He imagines all of them interacting with each other.

This is poetry written by someone who uses his rich life experience fully in his work. The best news is that the average reader can probably understand and enjoy them all.

---

E-mail: dennis@desnews.com