The Voice at 3 A.M.: Selected Late & New Poems

This is a wonderful book of poems, full of selections from most of Simic's major books of poetry. Some of this selection does not include a lot of poems from his very early books which is unfortunate. Many of these poems will dazzle and excite. He has a keen eye for the weird and the sublime alike.

This book is primarily a selection of poems from Simic's books from Unending Blues (1986) through Jackstraws (1999) with 19 additional new poems. As such, it is an excellent volume to introduce Simic but scarce on new poems for his avid fans. Simic's poems are interesting to analyze - so few traditional "poetic devices," so much reference to religion, philosophy and other tough issues, primarily in common-place language. Simic, however, makes this work in his surrealistic way. My definition of "work?" - poems that one reads and rereads by choice. An example: "... The way she appears in a window hours later To set the empty bowl And spoon on the table, And then exits So that the day may pass And the night may fall Into the empty bowl, Empty room, empty house, ..." Simic takes the commonplace words and actions and deftly turns them into an unusual perspective, in this case, day and night being dependent upon "her" actions. Or night falling into something i.e. empty bowl. There are occasional misteps where I as reader find a phrase jarring, unable to slide into Simic's image. There are poems I enjoy, but don't ask me what it means. But most of all there are poems that confront real religious and philosophical issues as they present themselves in life - without any easy or trite answers.

Charles Simic, The Voice at 3:00 A.M. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 2003)Simic's latest collection is something of a shortcut, a "new and selected poems" that has all the cache of a band releasing "greatest hits, volume 3" with one new track to entice the fans to buy it. If you've already got the bulk of the books Simic released between 1986 (Unending Blues) and 1999 (Jackstraws), the question is whether you want to shell out the cash for the small section of new poems. My advice, wait for the paperback.For those who have not yet been introduced to the wonder that is Charles Simic, however, this is a great way to get an overview of his recent work. Probably best read in tandem with Selected Early Poems (or his best early volume, Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk) for the full treatment. Either way, though, Simic is one of the finest American writers extant, and getting to know him will not only enrich your life, but give you something cool to talk about at boring society parties. Highly recommended. ****

One appeal of Simic's work is its deceptive ease: it appears lighter than it is, like Bob Dylan's lyrics although not as funny. To some extent Simic does this to clear room for his famed moralism, since these days the only way that people permit you to go holy on them is if you sucker them into it. He doesn't delve into deep shades of grey - lines like "And then there were no more/As we stood dazed in the burning city,/But, of course, they didn't film that" (in "Cameo Appearance") don't force readers to question their own beliefs. But such lines are moving, because he doesn't use his lived experience as a plea for sympathy; instead, he means to use his experience to broaden ours.The fact that Simic's verse is somewhat rhythmless (but for the line breaks) means that when a failure occurs, you don't just roll past it. For instance, "Evening Chess" ("The Black Queen raised high/In my father's angry hand") clunks because it exists entirely in meanings we've possessed before tackling the poem; all Simic does is bring them to the surface, where they dissolve as soon as we try to make something out of them. On the other hand, this style allows him to build intensity with little strain on the reader, as in "Street of Jewelers", where colour and light briskly accumulate in the back of the mind - it's not until the poem ends that you notice the radiance.The strongest section of this likely to be award-winning collection comes from "The Book of Gods and Devils", worth looking into in its own right although the key poems are here, foremost among them "Shelley", which is up with "The Lesson" at the summit of his work. In "Shelley", the narrator reads "mellifluous verses" while describing New York street scenes, finally revealing that for him, reading and observance are both forms of short-term relief from isolation. The selections from "Hotel Insomnia" and "A Wedding in Hell", slightly more obvious in their darkness ("Paradise Motel" begins: "Millions were dead; everybody was innocent"), are also of high standard. Thereafter there's a perceptible decline - some of his idiosyncrasies are muted, although the language in poems like "Night Picnic" ("There was the sky, starless and vast-/Home of every one of our dark thoughts") is its own reward. Still, it's a relief that the new poems - especially "Little Night Music" ("I could think of nothing to say./The music over, the night cold") and "The Museum Opens at Midnight" - stand up to the rest of the book. In terms of usefulness, one of the best poetry collections of the year.