Walking The Black Cat

By Charles Simic

In his thirteenth collection, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic melds folklore and black magic with everyday life.

Hamlet’s ghost wandering the halls of a Vegas motel, a street corner ventriloquist using passersby as dummies, and Jesus panhandling in a weed-infested Eden are just a few of the startling conceits Simic unleashes in this collection. 

“Few contemporary poets have been as influential-or inimitable-as Charles Simic."—The New York Times Book Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 17, 1996
• ISBN: 9780547691695

Charles Simic

Charles Simic was a poet, essayist, and translator who was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 and immigrated to the United States in 1954. He published more than twenty books of poetry, in addition to a memoir and numerous books of translations for which he received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. In 2007, he served as poet laureate of the United States. He was a distinguished visiting writer at New York University and professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught since 1973. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-four.

Book preview

A HARVEST ORIGINAL

HARCOURT, INC.

Orlanso Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

Copyright © 1996 by Charles Simic

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work

should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed

to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

www.HarcourtBooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simic, Charles, 1938–

Walking the black cat : poems/Charles Simic

p. cm.

A Harvest original.

ISBN 978-0-15-100219-1 (hardcover).—ISBN 978-0-15-600481-7 (pbk.)

I. Title.

PS3569.I4725W35 1996

811'.54—dc20 96-17604

The text was set in Centaur

Designed by Lori McThomas Buley

Printed in the United States of America

First edition

G F E D C B

N M L K J I (pbk.)

Some of these poems previously appeared in the following magazines, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, Partisan Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Boulevard, Harvard Review, Prose Poetry, The Paris Review, Antaeus, Grand Street, Mudfish, Indiana Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Baffler, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Chicago Review, The Yale Review, Verse, San Diego Reader, The Field, The American Poetry Review, Elle, Double Take, Boston Review and Portsmouth Review.

for Helen

Contents

Dark Corner [>]

Mirrors at 4 A.M. [>]

Relaxing in a Madhouse [>]

Roach Motel [>]

Emily's Theme [>]

Cameo Appearance [>]

The Friends of Heraclitus [>]

An Address with Exclamation Points [>]

Le Dame e i Cavalieri [>]

Shadow Publishing Company [>]

Talking to Little Birdies [>]

The Master of Ceremonies [>]

My Magician [>]

Night in the House of Cards [>]

On the Road to Somewhere Else [>]

What the Gypsies Told my Grandmother while She Was Still a Young Girl [>]

Little Unwritten Book [>]

Winter Evening [>]

Have You Met Miss Jones? [>]

On the Sagging Porch [>]

Dogs Hear It [>]

Meditation in the Gutter [>]

Charm School [>]

Ghosts [>]

Under New Management [>]

The Conquering Hero Is Tired [>]

The Story of Happiness [>]

Theatrical Costumes [>]

Bed Music [>]

Marked Playing Cards [>]

The Road in the Clouds [>]

Café Paradiso [>]

Blindman's Bluff [>]

Turn On the Lights [>]

At the Cookout [>]

Don't Wake the Cards [>]

Free the Goldfish [>]

Pastoral Harpsichord [>]

Kitchen Helper [>]

Entertaining the Canary [>]

The Forest Walk [>]

Slaughterhouse Flies [>]

My Darling Premonition [>]

Blood Orange [>]

October Light [>]

First Day of Summer [>]

The Preacher Says [>]

Sunset's Coloring Book [>]

In a Forest of Whispers [>]

Lone Tree

Reviews for Walking The Black Cat

[violetbramble · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book years ago for a TIOLI challenge and never read it. (The challenge was to read a book written by an alumnus of your university) I choose this book for the October RandomCAT because of the word Black in the title and because the book jacket promises that Simic delivers startling new visions of the haunted landscape. This is the first time I've read the poetry of Charles Simic. Simic is the 1990 winner of the Pultizer Prize for Poetry.These poems are strange, dreamlike things with a lot of classical references throughout. They're short, written in accessible language and a little bit creepy. I liked them- well, most of them. Here are some examples specifically for October:'''OCTOBER LIGHT'''That same light by which I saw her lastMade me close my eyes now in revery,Remembering how she sat in the gardenWith a red shawl over her shouldersAnd a small book in her lap,Once in a long while looking upWith the day's brightness on her face,As if to appraise something of utmost seriousnessShe has just read at least twice,With the sky clear and open to view,Because the leaves had already fallenAnd lay still around her two feet.'''LONE TREE'''A tree spookedBy it's own evening whispers,Afraid to rustle,Just nowBewitched by the distant sunsetMaking a noise full of deepMisgivings,Like bloody razor bladesBeing shuffled,And then again the quiet.The birds too terror-strickenTo make their own comment.Every leaf to every other leafAn apparition,A separate woe.Bare twig:A finger of suspicion.