Poet's Choice

By Robert Pinsky
Sunday, August 12, 2007

Charles Simic, newly appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, brings honor to the title. Simic's superb, engaging poetry is the opposite of bland or official. For example, here is a fairly recent Simic self-portrait:

MY TURN TO CONFESS

A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,

That's me, dear reader!

They were about to kick me out of the library

But I warned them,

My master is invisible and all-powerful.

Still, they kept dragging me out by the tail.

In the park the birds spoke freely of their own vexations.

On a bench, I saw an old woman

Cutting her white curly hair with imaginary scissors

While staring into a small pocket mirror.

I didn't say anything then,

But that night I lay slumped on the floor,

Chewing on a pencil,

Sighing from time to time,

Growling, too, at something out there

I could not bring myself to name.

Congratulations to the Library on its opportunity to consult with a poet-dog who (in the third line above) nearly gets kicked out of a library. I admire the poem for its wit, candor and invention -- and also for what it doesn't do. The poem declines to accept a pre-chewed notion of what "confession" might mean. In other words, this poem, astringent rather than bland, declines to flatter a taste for the obvious.

An earlier Simic poem is also candid and, in a quite different way, tells its truth by avoiding -- even mocking -- formulaic habits of mind:

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF CHARLES SIMIC

Is our Charles Simic afraid of death?

Yes, Charles Simic is afraid of death.

Does he kneel and pray for eternal life?

No, he's busy drawing a valentine with a crayon.

Pale as a freshly chopped onion,

He goes over the wrongs he committed.

His conscience, does it bother him much?

Only when he lies down to get a night's rest.

The hellfires, does he feel them closing in?

No, but he hears the hounds barking.

Does he lift his eyes humbly in forgiveness?

Her love was his judge, her wrath the jury.

Some dark night, praying to the Lord above,

His own tongue will slash his throat.

The shock and comedy of the last phrase -- can it be called "an image"? -- are unsettling, and compliment a reader's intelligence. ·

(Charles Simic's poem "My Turn to Confess" is from his book "My Noiseless Entourage: Poems." Harcourt. Copyright 2005 by Charles Simic. His poem "Further Adventures of Charles Simic" can be found in "Charles Simic: Selected Early Poems." George Braziller. Copyright 1999 by Charles Simic.)