The Life of Images: Selected Prose

by Charles Simic

Overview

A collection of new and selected essays by the Pulitzer Prize–winner and former Poet Laureate.

In addition to being one of America’s most famous and commended poets, Charles Simic is a prolific and talented essayist. The Life of Images brings together his best prose work written over twenty-five years.

A blend of the straightforward, the wry, and the hopeful, the essays in The Life of Images explore subjects ranging from literary criticism to philosophy, photography to Simic’s childhood in a war-torn country. Culled from five collections, each work demonstrates the qualities that make Simic’s poetry so brilliant yet accessible.

Whether he is revealing the influence of literature on his childhood development, pondering the relationship between food and comfort, or elegizing the pull to return to a homeland that no longer exists, the legendary poet shares his distinctive take on the world and offers an intimate look into his remarkable mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062364722
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/07/2015
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	835,663
File size:	953 KB

About the Author

Charles Simic was a poet, essayist, and translator who was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 and immigrated to the United States in 1954. He published more than twenty books of poetry, in addition to a memoir and numerous books of translations for which he received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. In 2007, he served as poet laureate of the United States. He was a distinguished visiting writer at New York University and professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught since 1973. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-four.

Table of Contents

From Wonderful Words, Silent Truth

Why I Like Certain Poems More than Others 3

Reading Philosophy at Night 5

Chinese Boxes and Puppet Theaters 15

Notes on Poetry and Philosophy 19

From The Unemployed Fortune-Teller

The Flute Player in the Pit 29

Food and Happiness 35

The Little Venus of the Eskimos 43

Fried Sausage 49

Elegy in a Spider's Web 53

Shop, Le Bacarès 61

No Cure for the Blues 65

From Orphan Factory

Charles the Obscure 75

In Praise of Invective 83

Orphan Factory 89

The Trouble with Poetry 97

Cut the Comedy 103

The Poetry of Village Idiots 107

Fearful Paradise 109

Night Sky 115

From The Metaphysician in the Dark

In Praise of Folly 133

The Devil Is a Poet 143

The Power of Ambiguity 151

Buster Keaton 155

Poetry and History 163

The Romance of Sausages 171

Poetry: The Art of Memory 175

Stargazing in the Cinema: On Joseph Cornell 177

Literature and the Gods: Roberto Calasso 189

From Memory Piano

Saul Steinberg 205

The Singing Simics 209

Tsvetaeva: The Tragic Life 215

Adam's Umbrella 229

From The Renegade

The Renegade 243

Reading About Utopia in New York City 257

Salvation Through Laughter 267

The Life of Images 283

The Powers of Invention 289

Uncollected

The True Adventures of Franz Kafka's Cage 305

My Secret 311

Oh, What a Lovely War! 315

Insomnia's Philosopher 327

Editorial Reviews

Simic is loved for his darkly humorous and phantasmagorical poems, but he's also an engaging essayist. Decades after immigrating to the States in 1954, he retains an outsider's perspective: inquisitive, incredulous, amazed by the apparently ordinary—all excellent qualities for an essayist. There's ample warmth and charm here, in pieces about artists, poets, novelists, travel and food, but I returned most often to rueful essays from the 1990s, when images from the war-torn former Yugoslavia kept overlapping and merging with memories of Simic's wartime childhood in Belgrade…

The New York Times Book Review - Joel Brouwer

…reminds us that Mr. Simic can be as intense (and as intensely charming) in his nonfiction…The Life of Images has many things you'd expect from a poet's nonfiction miscellany. There are book reviews, meditations on form, pieces on politics and moral themes. There is also a good deal of writing about photography and art, about which Mr. Simic is passionate and learned. Yet what's really special about this book is that it demonstrates what a melancholy baby this poet is, in all the best ways. Again and again, Mr. Simic returns to his favorite topics: old records, garlicky sausages, late nights, Buster Keaton movies, candles stuck into Chianti bottles, laughter, swearing, his lover's pink toes. His enthusiasms warm you up like a wood stove.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

02/16/2015
This essay collection may seem somewhat redundant, since its selections can be readily found in other books (except for five previously uncollected pieces), but it leaves no doubt that former poet laureate Simic wields a powerful pen. In artful, lucid, and sometimes humorous essays, he offers commanding insights on such diverse topics as poetry’s relationship to philosophy, the ravages of war, and the unpredictable beauties of film and music. In “Buster Keaton,” he writes of the silent-movie comedian, “What makes Keaton unforgettable is the composure and dignity he maintains in the face of what amounts to a deluge of misfortune.” In “My Secret,” Simic admits that he likes to write in bed and also reflects on the pleasure of writing in the kitchen, stating that, “All that’s left for the poet to do is garnish his poems with a little parsley and serve them to poetry gourmets.” In the powerful “Charles the Obscure,” about the blues guitarist Funny Papa Smith, Simic observes, “The blues poet has been where we are all afraid to go.” Readers may regret that Simic provides no introduction to shed light on the selection process for this book. Nonetheless, his wit shines and sparkles on every page. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Intriguing. . . . Virtually all the essays include sentences that could well find a home in Bartlett’s. . . . Lucid, lyrical, educative and engaging virtually all areas of the brain.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Simic’s The Life of Images: Selected Prose, also published this month, elucidates the poems, providing background into his experience (including his childhood in war-torn Yugoslavia) and the influences that have shaped his thinking.” — Washington Post

“’When our souls are happy,’ Charles Simic has written, ‘they talk about food.’ When my soul is happy, often enough, I want to talk about Mr. Simic...The Life of Images reminds us that Mr. Simic can be...intense (and as intensely charming) in his nonfiction. — New York Times Book Review

“The Life of Images is a free-wheeling and stimulating volume...Wry and smart...Simic is piquantly engaging, shrewdly hilarious, and superbly discerning and moving in his elucidation of poetry’s invaluable unexpectedness, subversiveness, and inexhaustibility.” — Booklist (starred review)

“In artful, lucid, and sometimes humorous essays, he offers commanding insights on such diverse topics as poetry’s relationship to philosophy, the ravages of war, and the unpredictable beauties of film and music...His wit shines and sparkles on every page.” — Publishers Weekly

“Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Simic brings a nuanced, cosmopolitan perspective to his essays, which explore art, intellect, his childhood memories, and the immigrant experience in America.” — O, the Oprah Magazine

“The Lunatic, his newest poetry collection, is his thirty-sixth. Simultaneously, Ecco, his publisher, has brought out The Life of Images: Selected Prose ,... the cream of his six previous prose collections... one of our finest poets,... a singularly engaging, eminently sane American essayist.” — New York Review of Books

“Decades after immigrating to the States in 1954, he retains an outsider’s perspective: inquisitive, incredulous, amazed by the apparently ordinary-all excellent qualities for an essayist. There’s ample warmth and charm here.” — New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

The Life of Images is a free-wheeling and stimulating volume...Wry and smart...Simic is piquantly engaging, shrewdly hilarious, and superbly discerning and moving in his elucidation of poetry’s invaluable unexpectedness, subversiveness, and inexhaustibility.

Booklist (starred review)

The Lunatic, his newest poetry collection, is his thirty-sixth. Simultaneously, Ecco, his publisher, has brought out The Life of Images: Selected Prose ,... the cream of his six previous prose collections... one of our finest poets,... a singularly engaging, eminently sane American essayist.

New York Review of Books

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Simic brings a nuanced, cosmopolitan perspective to his essays, which explore art, intellect, his childhood memories, and the immigrant experience in America.

the Oprah Magazine O

Simic’s The Life of Images: Selected Prose, also published this month, elucidates the poems, providing background into his experience (including his childhood in war-torn Yugoslavia) and the influences that have shaped his thinking.

Washington Post

’When our souls are happy,’ Charles Simic has written, ‘they talk about food.’ When my soul is happy, often enough, I want to talk about Mr. Simic...The Life of Images reminds us that Mr. Simic can be...intense (and as intensely charming) in his nonfiction.

New York Times Book Review

Simic’s The Life of Images: Selected Prose, also published this month, elucidates the poems, providing background into his experience (including his childhood in war-torn Yugoslavia) and the influences that have shaped his thinking.

Washington Post

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Simic brings a nuanced, cosmopolitan perspective to his essays, which explore art, intellect, his childhood memories, and the immigrant experience in America.

O: the Oprah Magazine

03/15/2015
Simic, an ethnic Serb who immigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia in 1954, has become a prominent voice in American letters. He garnered the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1990) and was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate in 2007. Simic has authored more than 30 books of poetry and several volumes of essays and memoirs, translated the works of Serbian poets into English, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. This selection, containing 37 essays gleaned from previous collections and four uncollected essays, concentrates on the various manifestations of the image. The moving image is scrutinized in the work of Joseph Cornell and Buster Keaton; and the images of poetic metaphor are exemplified in Emily Dickinson, blues lyrics, and the work of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva. There are several essays on the photograph (Paul Strand, Berenice Abbott, and Simic's family photos), the canvas (Odilon Redon, Saul Steinberg, and Hieronymus Bosch) and on the imagination exemplified through the intersection of poetry and philosophy. Simic invests several other essays with autobiographical detail affirming the individual over the tribe and abhorring sectarian or ethnic nationalism. VERDICT An eclectic and satisfying table prepared by a fine chef.—Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal

Library Journal

★ 2015-01-28
A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, essayist and translator presents a motley, intriguing collection of nonfiction pieces from the past 30 years.Simic (New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012, 2013, etc.) has assembled some 41 pieces (all but four appeared in previous collections) that show the vast range of his interests. Arranged chronologically, with a few exceptions, the essays—no real surprise to followers of the author—deal with art, philosophy, literature and poetry. In some cases—as in the many that previously appeared in the New York Review of Books—they deal with literary and artistic figures who may be less well-known to the general reading public—e.g., poet Yehuda Amichai, Joseph Cornell and Odilon Redon. But familiar names dance through these pages, as well. Simic continually sprinkles glitter on the work of Emily Dickinson (whom he greatly admires), and he offers a piece celebrating the work of Buster Keaton. He also writes affectingly about his own life, mentioning several times his boyhood experiences in World War II of being bombed by both the Nazis and the Allies. Perhaps as a result, he repeatedly excoriates the let's-make-war mentality and wonders why the United States continues to employ it as an early option in international relations. A few pieces do not have the traditional look of an essay. "Night Sky" (1996), for example, is a series of brief prose poems, each of which gets its own page. An amusing piece about bird cages (from 2011) features a series of short paragraphs connected only by their allusions to a bird cage. Simic's prose style is often epigrammatic. Virtually all the essays include sentences that could well find a home in Bartlett's—e.g., "Each one of us is a synthesis of the real and unreal," he wrote in 2000. Lucid, lyrical, educative and engaging virtually all areas of the brain.

Kirkus Reviews