Jackstraws: Poems

Charles Simic, Jackstraws (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1999)I've written so many glowing words about Charles Simic in the past year that anything more would really be superfluous (cf. reviews of The World Doesn't End, Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk, Classic Ballroom Dances, Charon's Cosmology, etc. etc.). All I can really say about Jackstraws is "another worthy entry in the corpus of Mr. Simic, which is already stacked full of quality material." Every new book from Charles Simic is an unalloyed pleasure to read, full of little unexpected pleasures and twists of phrase that cannot help but delight the reader. If you're not familiar with the work of Mr. Simic, I cannot but urge you to become so at your earliest opportunity; the man should be a living legend. As it is, he's just another poet trying to eke out a living, and that's a crime. ****

Charles Simic's surreal writing is fun, humorous, intellectually interesting, but still menacing. Each poem is like a cage with a rabid guinea pig inside, & you can't stop yourself from reaching in & petting it.

My favorite poem is Vacant Rooms and I'm using it for my poetry memorization project this spring in my Intro to Poetry class. I am impressed by the depth, which Simic uses so easily and bluntly. Upon first readings of these poems it may seem that is simply what the title states, but when you think about it slowly and read each line and visualize the concepts and connect each image with the next, it opens the flood gates for the imagination to wonder and get lost in a thousand interpretations that bring enjoyment and fun to the poem. Even if the poem is sad, it is an excellent feeling to comprehend the power behind the words.It truly is a beautiful collection, I only hope that one day I can write as good as him and create that depth behind the words to make them stand out among the rest.

For the first time my friend Charlie is beginning to get a few negative reviews. I'm here to dispell the rumors that he has lost his touch. This book, as well as his last, Walking the Black Cat, is evidence that he is still one of the best. The main contention has been that the typical Simic surprises are no longer surprising, that he has repeated himself one too many times. There isn't a single poet who isn't guilty of this poetic crime, and there are times that Charlie does come very close to sounding like the Charlie of old. Yet I still think the ultimate judgement comes not in a comparative judgement of a poem or group of poems against the entire body of work (though it is useful to do so), but whether single poems stand on their own. This is, of course, hard to do given the poet's intentions to group poems into the volumes that he/she makes available to the public--we can only judge by what we are given. But poems like "Live at Club Revolution" are fresh because of the odd combination of images Charlie is known for. The address is similar, the reference to a nightclub as a setting for an historical event is also something we've come across in Charlie's poems before. But once the poem begins it bears little to no resemblance to any other. And this is interesting to note considering that once, quite a few years ago, Charlie wrote another poem with the title "Jackstraws," which bears no resemblance to the title poem of this volume. Yet the game itself the title comes from illustrates a thematic interest that is ongoing; that one stumbles upon a scene of such quiet and danger--whether the danger of upsetting a pile of sticks delicately placed on a table in a game much like Jenga, or the real danger of those war scenes Charlie has become so famous for remembering--is something that must be visited over and over, yet never without some kind of subversion. To deceive oneself into a feeling of safety, joy, fear--this is the aim of his language.

Amidst John Ashbery's (hardly surprising) quantitative & qualitative productivity this decade, it might be easy to overlook the (at least, I would argue) equally formidable output of one of his poetic sons, Charles Simic, and it is hard to imagine a better book of poems than *Jackstraws* being published this year. Simply between pages 41-44, nothing less than a referendum on the pathetic fallacy--overdetermination ("Filthy Landscape") & obliteration/white-out ("The Blizzard of Love")--occurs. Cultural work is rare enough, much less in poetry, & Simic is a yeoman. If you value your soul, get this book.