Charles Simic, The World Doesn’t End
Reading Chales Simic’s surrealist poems is like diving into a Dali painting. The clocks are dripping, the landscape is both familiar and unfamiliar, the juxtaposition of images doesn’t seem to make any sense, but the longer you spend in the poem, the more everything seems to fit together (in much the same way a dream makes sense). His poems are darkly original portraits of life.
I was stolen by the gypsies. My parents stole
me right back. Then the gypsies stole me again.
This went on for some time. One minute I was
in the caravan suckling the dark teat of my new
mother, the next I sat at the long dining room table
eating my breakfast with a silver spoon.
It was the first day of spring. One of my
fathers was sining in the bathtub; the other one
was painting a live sparrow the colors of a tropical
bird.
Robert Hass, Time and Materials
Robert Hass’s poetry is timeless. He transcends time and place, and writes about something that is universal, but also deeply familiar. His poems vary in length and structure, but his style is reminescent of Zen and ancient Chinese poetry–there is a reverence and wisdom in his lines. He does has a sense of humor in his writing (one of his poems is titled: “Poem with a cucumber in it” and includes the line: “If you think I am going to make/A sexual joke in this poem, you are mistaken”) but Hass does not settle with getting you to chuckle. His poems always twist towards an image that is both strangely humorous and haunting.
The opening poem in Time and Materials is short, but the imagery is so powerful, the poem seems much bigger. (Think of “Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams)
Iowa, January
In the long winter nights, a farmer’s dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrow.
Donald Hall, White Apples and the Taste of Stone
Donald Hall is the quintescential American poet (think Robert Frost and Billy Collins). His poetry is heavily narrative, and captures the voice of mid-centry America as it comes of age into the 21st century. He writes with translucency and poignancy of the banality of death and loss (his collection, The Marriage Bed examines his life following his wife’s death) without falling into sentimentalism. Several of his poems are so intimate, that it feels as if you are reading his personal letters in verse.
White Apples
when my father had been dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
I sat up in bed
and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again
I would put on my coat and galoshes
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