Simic's Stories

One of the things that worked really well for Simic was the rather plain way he wrote. By that I mean he did not use too many words, trying to shove multiple details down our throats, trying to amaze us with his vocabulary. But his images were still clear, and I think another reason some of his poems (not all) worked for me is because of the way he builds a story out of images, not simply words.

       My mother was a braid of black smoke.

       She bore me swaddled over the burning cities.

       The sky was a vast and windy place for a child

to play.

       We met many other who were just like us.

They were trying to put on their overcoats with

arms made of smoke.

       The high heavens were full of little shrunken 

deaf ears instead of stars.

I love when a poem makes me want to paint (something I do not usually do). There is magic in the ability to visualize something that does not exist; this is something familiar words, even if put in unfamiliar places, help us do.

Another one of my favorites:

     The stone is a mirror which works poorly.

Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dim-

ness, who's to say? In the hush your heart sounds

like a black cricket.

There are so many different things working together in the poem above. Simic takes two familiar concepts like stones and mirrors and puts them together. He also includes the conversational question, and I love when poems can take a conversational tone; in this moment it is even more interesting, though, because the conversation exists in the midst of a "deep" subject. I love the uses of "your", making it personal to the reader; the last line is so beautiful and it pertains to me! That gets me excited as a reader, feeling fully involved.

Lastly, I love this:

    The ideal spectator who lives only for art,

hands folded behind his back.  A blank canvas

appropriately entitled "Blank" before him. It's exact-

ly 11 A.M. in the provincial museum. One can hear

the rumbling stomach of the uniformed guard, who

has the face of someone drowned by moonlight.

Like the first, it tells a concrete story, probably even more concrete. The story is a system of images working together. It is without emotion until you yourself create the images; then I think this poem is actually pretty funny. A man who claims "art is life" stares at a blank canvas. And that last line. Just wow. Keep in mind, it is only 11 A.M., yet he is drowned in moonlight. That right there is magic, telling the whole story of a man in three words.