000			01615nam a2200217 a 4500
001			066965
005			20231009193422.0
008			121113s1999 nyu 000 0 eng
010			_a98035354
020			_a9780151004225
050	0	0	_aPS3569.I4725 _bJ33 1999
082	0	0	_a811.54 SIM
100	1		_aSimic, Charles _d, 1938-
245	1	0	_aJackstraws _b: poems _c/ Charles Simic.
260			_aNew York _b: Harcourt Brace _c, c1999.
300			_aix, 85 p. ; 22 cm.
520			_aWith James Tate, Mark Strand, and others, Simic led American poetry's turn toward surrealism in the late 1960s, establishing an eerily disjunctive but imagistically arresting style. Today the Yugoslavia-born poet and 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner continues resolutely along the same antilogical, irreverent path, but that path is now deeply worn, and surprise is less easily evoked. While Simic sets up unpredictable scenes that blend the comic with the ominous ("A pastry chef carrying a lit birthday cake/ Found himself in the blinding snowstorm"), he also falls prey to an awkwardness of phrasing that can read like an unsteady translation ("The smoke that was like the skirts/ Slit on the side to give the legs freedom/ To move while dancing the tango/ Past ballroom mirrors on page 1944"). Some endings seem tacked on or settled for, as if the poet had lost interest in the dream. Like any dream journal, Jackstraws is a mixture of hits and misses, not without invention but unlikely to add substantially to Simic's established reputation.
586			_aWinner Pulitzer Prize, 1989
650		4	_aPoetry, American
942			_cMO
999			_c270231 _d270231