Unending Blues: Poems
by Charles Simic
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles SimicEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1986-11-21
ISBN: 0156928310
Number of pages: 64
Publisher: Mariner Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780156928311
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Unending Blues: Poems
Book Review: "Then the coldly dawning suspicion--"
Summary: 5 Stars
For fans of Kenneth Rexroth, Frank O'Hara
Unending Blues (1983) is the kind of poetry collection that you can take around everywhere and read when the occasional minute frees up. I read this thing in a matter of two days (it's a very short book, being only 58 pages and forty-four poems long), but I also found myself reading poems multiple times not merely for understanding, but to ingrain Simic's wonderful, silent images into my head. That's the thing about his images--there are so many successful strays from cliche that each line or combination of lines finds difficulty in sticking upon a first reading. Like in "Painters of Angels and Seraphim," which goes far to capture a single visual essence or moment in time without dragging itself into oblivion with too many details, too little punch:
After a long lunch of roast lamb
And many heavy glasses of heavy red wine,
I fell asleep in a rowboat
That I never got around to untie
From its mooring under the willows
That went on fussing over my head
As if to make my shade even deeper.
I woke once to pull my shirt off,
And once when I heard my name
Called by a woman, distant and worried,
Since it was past sundown,
The water reflecting the dark hills,
And the sky of that chill blue
That used to signify a state of grace.
The preponderance of imagery leads the poem into a healthy state of rhythm that almost avoids that dash and dabble of darkness that lies under the surface. And the book is abound with similar conflicts both strange and alluring. There is a sense of absence and a sense that the speaker, which in a Simic poem almost always feels biographical (much like O'Hara, whose poems of daily life concentrate the imagination on how the world is perceived in the first person rather than splicing creativity onto more displaced, fictive perspectives), only has a series of spitfire-image-presentation memories to deal with. In reading these poems, I'm reminded of films that use dream sequences with many choppy shots, that are more a compilation of isolated events that form a more unifying whole. Of course, Simic's poems are rarely fragmentary, at least in this collection, which is where I found most of my attraction--the everyday vernacular is paired with well-rounded, obligatory grammar and syntax which not only helps show that the speaker has retained some sort of sanity and stability (masculine, perhaps, sensibility?) but knows that there is an audience out there listening to him as poet not him as babbling buffoon. Like in "William and Cynthia," which transplants the biography of others onto Simic's speaker:
Says she'll take him to the Museum
Of Dead Ideas and Emotions.
Wonders that he hasn't been there yet.
Says it looks like a Federal courthouse
With its many steps and massive columns.
Apparently not many people go there
On such drizzly gray afternoons.
Says even she gets afraid
In the large empty exhibition halls
With monstrous ideas in glass cases,
Naked emotions on stone pedestals
In classically provocative poses.
Says she doesn't understand why he claims
All that reminds him of a country fair.
Admits there's a lot of old dust
And the daylight is the color of sepia,
Just like on this picture postcard
With its two lovers chastely embracing
Against a painted cardboard sunset.
The result in several of Simic's poems here is a quality like a leech, but it begs the question that is actually provided on the back cover of the book: where does Simic get his inspiration? But to go further, what Simic chooses to focus on with those inspiring people, places, events, and objects (especially of ancient or recent art), either known or unknown to Simic, and what he does with that focus is what's really important--because the motif of the book represents the common identity of the blues, of that great musical and literary genre hybrid that many poets have attempted to have success in contributing to, but have ultimately either run into cliche without moving forward, or have been stuck allowing the reader to easily understand each piece. While Simic achieves very enduring poems that are short and sweet, but he also provides brilliantly accessible content that has universal qualities while remaining pointed, like an ancient sword, in the name of poetry. But when you reach down deeper, which is possible, you can find grittier stuff--you can trace the desperation in his voice--you can feel the cynicism and slightly-bent humor bubbling up from the surface--you can realize that the poems are poems but are also dialogues and monologues, with the audience as well as between Simic and himself.
On a final note, I think that the easiest criticism Unending Blues could take is through the book's form. The three sections have a vague movement (I will not try to prove this movement as I have not spent too much time tracking it) from urban environment to rural environment to a focus on art (in general). When you match poems that have comparable themes and literary qualities to one another, those poems in the same section or collection that are the odd ducks, so to speak, stand out, and in this book's case, there are several poems that do not work. But, while several lacking poems out of forty-four do not make a book perfect, it is pretty close. Compare a solid collection like this to a more contemporary collection, and you may be able to set off a light bulb as to why American poetry, at least in book form, is losing its edge and ultimately becoming a less powerful force.
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