I grabbed The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks by our poet laureate Charles Simic from the new shelf at the public library. I love having bite sized smarticisms. I pop them in my brain as I take the subway or wait on line to buy Dayquil. Some make me laugh. Many make me think. He takes on poetry, history, nationalism, insomnia, jazz, and love, to name a few. I feel inspired to gather together my own pronouncements and aphorisms, dress them up in some nice nouns and sit them in their appropriate classrooms...but could I fill an entire book and keep it this refreshing, sage, and funny? No way! Simic's collection makes a good companion.
A short sampling of Simic:
Imagism is realism minus the moral. If Imagist poems were didactic, people would find them more acceptable.
Religion: Turning the mystery of Being into a figure who resembles our grandfather sitting on the potty.
Orphan factories and scapegoat farms are the Balkans' chief economy.
Poetry like the movies worries about sequencing, framing, montage, and cutting.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
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