BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #3 ("The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Charles Simic)

Whoa. Bukowski #4? And now Charles Simic #3? What gives? You'll have to wait and see. Anyone want to guess who wrote my two favorite poems? Send me a comment....

Anyway, Simic has written better poems, but this one is my favorite. I still remember reading it in the Mary Norton Clapp Library at Occidental College in 1987, standing up, and saying, "Wow!"
This is from his awesomely-titled Return to a Place Lit By a Glass of Milk:

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Buck has a headache. Tony ate
a real hot pepper. Sylvia weighs
herself naked on the bathroom
scale. Gary owes $800 to the
Internal Revenue. Roger says
poetry is the manifacture of lightning rods.
Jose wants to punch his wife
in the mouth. Ted's afraid
of his own shadow. Ray talks
to his tomato plants. Paul
wants a job in the post office
selling stamps. Mary keeps
smiling at herself in the mirror.

And I,
I piss in the sink
with a feeling of
eternity.

I just love this poem.

And it was short and sweet to offset the Bukowski.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#4 - "we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain" by Charles Bukowski
#5 - "Garbage" by A.R. Ammons
#6 - "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers
#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

Another New Yorker Dispatched

Polished off segments of another back issue, the August 20, 2007, incarnation.


A moderately funny humor piece by Paul Simms here.


Adam Gopnik offers a review/appreciation/critical look of my favorite science fiction writer Philip K. Dick here. Reading it reminded me that Dick is not on my top 20 books list, but is probably in the 20-30 range.

A poem by Charles Simic:

Driving Home

Minister of our coming doom, preaching

On the car radio, how right

Your Hell and damnation sound to me

As I travel these small, bleak roads

Thinking of the mailman’s son

The Army sent back in a sealed coffin.

His house is around the next turn.

A forlorn mutt sits in the yard

Waiting for someone to come home.

I can see the TV is on in the living room,

Canned laughter in the empty house

Like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse.

And a good story by T Cooper called "Swimming" here.

Charles Simic is the New Poet Laureate

My favorite poet, Charles Simic, has been named the new U.S. Poet Laureate, succeeding Donald Hall.

The New York Times story is here. Includes links to some poems.

I try and see Mr. Simic whenever he comes through town. He is a great performer of his poems. One of the few poets who I can never tire of hearing read. He is next reading in NYC on August 21 as part of the Bryant Park Distinguished Poets Series.

I have lost count of the number of signed items I have from Mr. Simic but, between anthologies and his own books, the number exceeds 50. I'm going out on a limb to say that he is probably the most prolific of all poet laureates. I realize that I am unable to collect all of his work.

I have Charles Simic stories galore, from my stuttering introduction of myself the first time I met him ("You're my favorite living poet!") to him shooing me away at Joe's Pub, so he can sign books for some other people.

One of my Simic prizes is a signed copy of a 1959 Chicago Review, which he affirmed to me contained his first published poems, although he acknowledged in his self-effacing way, they weren't very good.

Check out also his Poetry in Motion poster here.

I'll leave you with one of his best-known, wonderful, short poems:

Watermelons
Green Buddhas On the fruit stand. We eat the smile And spit out the teeth.
From Return to a Place Lit By a Glass of Milk, by Charles Simic.

Poetry in Motion, Day 20 (Charles Simic)

It was a true surprise last Summer when I chanced upon this poster at the Transit Museum store in Grand Central Station.

I don't remember ever seeing this on the subways in New York, so it must have been up pre-June 1997. I am certain of this, as I am, and have been since the mid-'80s, a huge Charles Simic fan. I would estimate that Mr. Simic has signed at least 50 different items for me, which includes anthologies. This poster has yet to be so graced. But once it does, you can bet it will be framed and hung somewhere in my world.

from Watch Repair


A small wheel
Incandescent,
Shivering like
A pinned butterfly.

Hands
Pointing in all directions:
The crossroads
One enters
In a nightmare.

Higher than anyone
Number 12 presides
Like a beekeeper
Over the swarming honeycomb
Of the open watch.


Charles Simic (b. 1938)

"Watch Repair" (excerpt) from Return to a Place Lit By a Glass of Milk by Charles Simic.

You can read the full poem here. It's only a few stanzas longer than what fit on the poster.

Previous BillyBlog Poetry in Motion posts:

from "My Grandmother's New York Apartment" by Elizabeth Alexander (Day 1)
from "A Bouquet" by Bei Dao (Day 2)
"Separation" by W.S. Merwin (Day 3)
"The Groundfall Pear" by Jane Hirshfield (Day 4)
"For Friendship" by Robert Creeley (Day 5)
from "Crazy Horse Speaks" by Sherman Alexie (Day 6)
"Hunger" by Billy Collins (Day 7)
from "Little Man Around the House" by Yusef Komunyakaa (Day 8)
"The Loon on Oak-Head Pond" by Mary Oliver (Day 9)
from "I Am Vertical" by Sylvia Plath (Day 10 - part 1)
"Two Haiku" by Kobayashi Issa (Robert Hass, trans.) (Day 10 - part 2)
"you say 'i will come' " by Lady Otomo No Sakanoe (Kenneth Rexroth, trans.) (Day 11)
"You Called Me Corazón" by Sandra Cisneros (Day 12)
"Too Much Heat, Too Much Work" by Tu Fu (Carolyn Kizer, trans.) (Day 13)
"Sew" by Donald Hall (Day 14)
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (Day 15)
"Luck" by Langston Hughes (Day 16)
"0˚" by Elizabeth Spires (Day 17 - part 1)
"I Finally Managed to Speak with Her" by Hal Sirowitz (Day 17 - part 2)
"Window" by Carl Sandburg (Day 18)
" 'Hope' is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson (Day 19)