Book Description
Charles Simic is one of America's most popular--and most enigmatic--contemporary poets. Set apart from his contemporaries by a particularly inclusive and worldly vision, his is a poetic voice singular in our time for its quality of empathy, for its imagination-enriched logic, and for its deep and abiding clarity. In Charles Simic: Essays on the Poetry the perspectives of a range of critics, poets, and scholars are brought together in an attempt to offer an appraisal of his art.
The book begins with the earliest responses to Simic's poetry and traces the last twenty-five years of critical reception, revealing a constantly metamorphosing image of the relationship between the poet and his work. The book's essays and book reviews address the full body of Simic's verse from sometimes radically different points of view and attempt to delineate the aesthetic from which his art emerges. Contributors include William Matthews, Diane Wakoski, James Atlas, and Helen Vendler. The book's final part includes an extended interview with Simic on the subject of poetic form and a selection of Simic's autobiographical writings.
Bruce Weigl is Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University, and Director of the MFA Program in Writing. His other books include The Imagination as Glory: On the Poetry of James Dickey and volumes of poetry including What Saves Us, The Monkey Wars, and Sweet Lorain (forthcoming).

FROM THE PUBLISHER