Charles Simic

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 cutting-"Time-that...

Written over many years, this book is a collection of notebook entries by our current Poet Laureate.

The poems in Charles Simic's new collection evoke a variety of settings and images, from New York City to small New England towns; from crowds spilling onto the sidewalk on a hot summer night to an abandoned wooden church and a car graveyard overgrown with weeds. His subjects range from a bakery early in the morning to the fingerprints on a stranger's front door; from waiters in an empty restaurant to the decorations in a window of a funeral home;...

Cardinal Bendinello Sauli died in disgrace in 1518, implicated, rightly or wrongly, in a conspiracy to assassinate the then Pope, Leo X. This book, based on extensive archival research in Genoa and Rome, traces Sauli's rise and fall, setting one man's life and career against a background of political turmoil and intrigue, and offering new perspectives on the patronal links which bound pope, cardinals and their family and courtiers so closely together....

The latest volume of poetry from Charles Simic hums with the liveliness of the writer's pen¿́¿Scribbled in the Dark brings the poet's signature sardonic sense of humor, piercing social insight, and haunting lyricism to diverse and richly imagined landscapes. Peopled by policemen, presidents, kids in Halloween masks, a fortune-teller, a fly on the wall of the poet's kitchen; on crowded New York streets, on park benches, and under darkened skies:...

Hamlet's ghost wandering the halls of a Vegas motel, a street corner ventriloquist using passersby as dummies, and Jesus panhandling in a weed-infested Eden are just a few of the startling conceits Simic unleashes in this collection.