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A Wedding in Hell
Simic puts chirping birds, sex, and happiness into a world of broken windows, shivering trees, soldiers, lone dogs, the homeless of the city, and a God still making up his mind. “Provocative...a tantalizing, beautiful fusion of visions” (Bloomsbury Review).
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
About the author
Charles Simic
269 books478 followersU.S. Poet Laureate, 2007-2008
Dušan Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. Simic’s childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where he graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963.
Simic is the author of more than 30 poetry collections, including The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Jackstraws (1999); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and Scribbled in the Dark (2017). He is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught for over 30 years.
Simic has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His other honors and awards include the Frost Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Prize. He served as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2001. Simic has also been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Dušan Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. Simic’s childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where he graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963.
Simic is the author of more than 30 poetry collections, including The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Jackstraws (1999); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and Scribbled in the Dark (2017). He is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught for over 30 years.
Simic has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His other honors and awards include the Frost Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Prize. He served as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2001. Simic has also been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
May 21, 2007
Charles Simic now writes in English and lives in New Hampshire, but he was born in Belgrade, three years before the United States entered the Second World War. He has said that "being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me," and that “I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed…" Whatever he witnessed, the emotional quality of his poems are never far from the shattering of windows, a single man running, and boots thudding menacingly against the cobblestones.
I love Charles Simic, but I believe this is only the second book of poetry I have read by him. The first was Dismantling the Silence (1971); the second is this collection, published almost twenty-years later, four years after he received the Pulitzer Prize. The funny thing is, though, that I do not see any signs of development. The poems here are very much like the poems from twenty years before.
I don’t offer this as a criticism. The old poetry was spare, minimalist, haunting. The more recent poetry is the same way. Even now, the windows break, the man runs, the big boots thud on the cobblestones.
Here are two of the poems from this volume, just to give you a sample. There are many poems here which are not about cities, but somehow the ones about cities are the ones I remember:
DREAM AVENUE
Monumental, millennial decrepitude,
As tragedy requires. A broad
Avenue with trash unswept
A few solitary speck-sized figures
Going about their businessman
In a world already smudged by a schoolboy’s eraser.
You’ve no idea what city this is,
What country? It could be a dream,
But is it yours? You’re nothing
But a vague sense of loss,
A piercing, heart-wrenching dreadful
On an avenue with no name
With a few figures conveniently small
And blurred who in any case
Have their backs to you
As they look elsewhere, beyond
The long row of gray buildings and their many windows,
Some of which appear broken.
IN STRANGE CITIES
The way a curving street
Reveals with each step
A novel sight,
Perhaps a high window
Shuttered against
The late afternoon sun.
With someone rising from
a bed of illicit love
To throw it open
Just as you pass by,
Green shutters clattering
Behind your back,
The sunlight ahead of you
Golden like a lion
Escaped from the zoo,
And now rearing up
In all his terror
And royal splendor.
October 16, 2010
Simic is one of the best, and in A Wedding in Hell he's in top form. "Lyric poets perpetuate the oldest values on earth," he reminds us. "They assert the individual's experience against that of the tribe." Simic chooses very deep specific topics, he is incredible at really focusing a poem on something small whether it be an event or an object, and then he condenses his poem into so few words that each word has a powerful punch and the poem collectively has a strong meaning. And never has he been more successful at unsettling a reader's certainties. "My aspiration," he admits, "is to create a kind of non-genre made up of fiction, autobiography, the essay, poetry, and of course, the joke!" In these books he fulfills that ambition.
This Morning
Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.
I'm just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying
And whispering. "Come to me my desire,"
I said. And she came to me by and by,
Her breath smelling of mint, her tongue
Wetting my cheek, and then she vanished.
Slowly day came, a gray streak of daylight
To bathe my hands and face in.
Hours passed, and then you crawled
Under the door, and stopped before me.
You visit the same tailors the mourners do,
Mr. Ant. I like the silence between us,
The quiet--that holy state even the rain
Knows about. Listen to her begin to fall,
As if with eyes closed,
Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.
This Morning
Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.
I'm just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying
And whispering. "Come to me my desire,"
I said. And she came to me by and by,
Her breath smelling of mint, her tongue
Wetting my cheek, and then she vanished.
Slowly day came, a gray streak of daylight
To bathe my hands and face in.
Hours passed, and then you crawled
Under the door, and stopped before me.
You visit the same tailors the mourners do,
Mr. Ant. I like the silence between us,
The quiet--that holy state even the rain
Knows about. Listen to her begin to fall,
As if with eyes closed,
Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.
June 8, 2015
I will read every collection by this man.....But not sure what I will do when I finish the last collection.
My Favorites from this collection.
Part 1
*Dream Avenue
*Sinister Company
*Haunter Mind
*The Dead in Photographs
*Evening Visitor
*The World
Part 2
*Heroic Moment
*Explaining a Few Things
*Awaiting Judgement
*Love Flea
Part 3
*A Puppet Play
*The Story of Cercopes
*In Strange Cities
*Midnight Serenaders
*Dark TV Screen
*The Tower
*The Secret
My Favorites from this collection.
Part 1
*Dream Avenue
*Sinister Company
*Haunter Mind
*The Dead in Photographs
*Evening Visitor
*The World
Part 2
*Heroic Moment
*Explaining a Few Things
*Awaiting Judgement
*Love Flea
Part 3
*A Puppet Play
*The Story of Cercopes
*In Strange Cities
*Midnight Serenaders
*Dark TV Screen
*The Tower
*The Secret
August 11, 2015
Lovers who take pleasure
In the company of trees,
Who seek diversion after many kisses
In each other's arms,
Watching the leaves,
The way they quiver
At the slightest breath of wind,
The way they thrill,
And shudder almost individually,
One of them beginning to shake
While the others are still quiet,
Unaccountably, unreasonably --
What am I saying?
One leaf in a million more fearful,
More happy,
Than all the others?
On this oak tree casting
Such deep shade,
And my kids closing sleepily
With that one leaf twittering
Now darkly, now luminously.
I am really growing to love & seek out Simic's work. He is fast becoming a favorite poet of mine!
Favorites: Leaves, Crazy About Her Shrimp, Transport, Romantic Landscape, Reading History, Childhood at the Movies, The Oldest Child
In the company of trees,
Who seek diversion after many kisses
In each other's arms,
Watching the leaves,
The way they quiver
At the slightest breath of wind,
The way they thrill,
And shudder almost individually,
One of them beginning to shake
While the others are still quiet,
Unaccountably, unreasonably --
What am I saying?
One leaf in a million more fearful,
More happy,
Than all the others?
On this oak tree casting
Such deep shade,
And my kids closing sleepily
With that one leaf twittering
Now darkly, now luminously.
I am really growing to love & seek out Simic's work. He is fast becoming a favorite poet of mine!
Favorites: Leaves, Crazy About Her Shrimp, Transport, Romantic Landscape, Reading History, Childhood at the Movies, The Oldest Child
July 11, 2012
Pleasant, a little bit witty, hard to tell what he is getting at. It helps to have his Slavic voice in mind when reading. Not generally mind-blowing.
February 21, 2021
To grieve, always to suffer
At the thought of time passing.
The outside world shadowy
As your deepest self.
Melancholy meadows, trees so still,
They seem afraid of themselves.
The sunset sky for one brief moment
Radiant with supreme insight,
And then it's over. Tragic theater:
Blood and mourning at which
Even the birds fall silent.
Spirit, you who are everywhere and nowhere,
Watch over the lost lamb
Now that the mouth of the Infinite
Opens over us
And its dumb tongue begins to move darkly.
January 21, 2008
Charles Simic, A Wedding in Hell (Harcourt Brance Jovanovich, 1994)
Simic is as good as it gets, and in A Wedding in Hell he's in top form. Simultaneously irreverent and spiritual, the bulk of the poems in this book center around themes of higher powers and how odd they are when looked at from our perspective. Simic's usual surreal wit is in play throughout, and almost every poem has an unexpected pleasure waiting for the reader at the end. (I'd jotted down quotes to put here, but it was raining yesterday and the paper got smudged. Since I can't read my own writing, just imagine "Prayer" is inserted here.)
Lovely, on a par with Simic's best work. Highly recommended. ****
Simic is as good as it gets, and in A Wedding in Hell he's in top form. Simultaneously irreverent and spiritual, the bulk of the poems in this book center around themes of higher powers and how odd they are when looked at from our perspective. Simic's usual surreal wit is in play throughout, and almost every poem has an unexpected pleasure waiting for the reader at the end. (I'd jotted down quotes to put here, but it was raining yesterday and the paper got smudged. Since I can't read my own writing, just imagine "Prayer" is inserted here.)
Lovely, on a par with Simic's best work. Highly recommended. ****
October 13, 2018
The title of this book is not particularly appealing. But those who are familiar with the author's work [1] will understand that this title captures the author's familiar wrestling with matters of sexual intimacy and spirituality. The author cannot in any sense be considered a traditional Christian, but at the same time he is clearly someone who thinks and reflects often on matters of spirituality and appears to have a strong sense of divine judgment even if he does not presume to consider himself on the side of the angels. Indeed, some of the poems in this collection, including the moving and gloomy "Awaiting Judgment" explicitly show the poet as someone who is anticipating a harsh judgment but seemingly unable to turn towards God and avoid the unpleasant end he fears. It is as if the author is too caught up in the negativity of his melancholy gloom and the addictive lusts of the flesh to wholeheartedly repent, and at the same time he cannot pretend that God and His judgment do not exist, as so many do, and so he is left in between, a state that this book of poetry captures rather well.
This poetry collection, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. And like the author's work in general, the book is united by common preoccupations and themes and approaches. A great deal of this work appears to be deeply informed by different aspects of history. For example, "Mad Business" shows the author aware of biblical history, World War II history, and ancient history and myth, all told from the point of view of a friendly shopgirl offering wares to unwary customers. "Via Del Tritone" shows the author in Rome dealing with a sense of isolation and loneliness. "The Beggar On Houston Street" even manages to conjure up an obscure reference to the Spanish Civil War, something that many of the readers would likely not be very aware of. As might be expected, many of the poems also comment on matters of sex, predictably in ways that are not glamorous but are rather dark and unpleasant, whether one is engaged in lovemaking with someone who is worried that she is getting fat even if one is "Crazy About Her Shrimp" or one is going into battle not fully clothed and invoking the sort of curses that hindered the Greek attack on ancient Troy.
It is easy to see that one could get rather irritated with the author after a while. Unless one was the same sort of person the author was, both appreciative of history while also haunted by it, knowledgeable about God but not a devout believer in Him, it would be easy to be irritated by the fact that in book after book--and I have read half a dozen books of his by now (reviews forthcoming)--the author goes over the same territory over and over again without any sense of humor. The author's writings appear to move in very characteristic and familiar ruts, but when one reads book after book by someone who focuses on a familiar set of problems and never seems to advance beyond one's initial ponderings, it is easy to get frustrated at the lack of progress over the years and decades. Even so, although the author does not appear to be one who made significant progress over the course of his writings, at least not that I have been able to tell at any rate, the author at least invokes sympathy because of his combination of self-awareness with frustration over matters of communication with God and others, problems that others can relate to all too easily.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
This poetry collection, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. And like the author's work in general, the book is united by common preoccupations and themes and approaches. A great deal of this work appears to be deeply informed by different aspects of history. For example, "Mad Business" shows the author aware of biblical history, World War II history, and ancient history and myth, all told from the point of view of a friendly shopgirl offering wares to unwary customers. "Via Del Tritone" shows the author in Rome dealing with a sense of isolation and loneliness. "The Beggar On Houston Street" even manages to conjure up an obscure reference to the Spanish Civil War, something that many of the readers would likely not be very aware of. As might be expected, many of the poems also comment on matters of sex, predictably in ways that are not glamorous but are rather dark and unpleasant, whether one is engaged in lovemaking with someone who is worried that she is getting fat even if one is "Crazy About Her Shrimp" or one is going into battle not fully clothed and invoking the sort of curses that hindered the Greek attack on ancient Troy.
It is easy to see that one could get rather irritated with the author after a while. Unless one was the same sort of person the author was, both appreciative of history while also haunted by it, knowledgeable about God but not a devout believer in Him, it would be easy to be irritated by the fact that in book after book--and I have read half a dozen books of his by now (reviews forthcoming)--the author goes over the same territory over and over again without any sense of humor. The author's writings appear to move in very characteristic and familiar ruts, but when one reads book after book by someone who focuses on a familiar set of problems and never seems to advance beyond one's initial ponderings, it is easy to get frustrated at the lack of progress over the years and decades. Even so, although the author does not appear to be one who made significant progress over the course of his writings, at least not that I have been able to tell at any rate, the author at least invokes sympathy because of his combination of self-awareness with frustration over matters of communication with God and others, problems that others can relate to all too easily.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
May 21, 2021
Not sure what to make of the poetry of Charles Simic. They seem like a type of stream-of-consciousness writing that waivers between dream-like and hallucinogenic. He may be under the influence or simply very imaginative. If you want to explore a very different type of poetry, Simic is a good place to start. Here's a stanza from his poem "The Clocks of the Dead":
One night I went to keep the clock company,
It had a loud tick after midnight
As if it were uncommonly afraid.
It's like whistling past a graveyard,
I explained. In any case, I told him I understood.
One night I went to keep the clock company,
It had a loud tick after midnight
As if it were uncommonly afraid.
It's like whistling past a graveyard,
I explained. In any case, I told him I understood.
March 17, 2026
Charles Simic is my favorite poet. He creates images that unfold like luminous and radiant films within the black and white pages. Rest in peace Charles Simic, your writing will live on as an inspiration to so many others.
July 7, 2017
This is not one of my favorite Simics but he is undeniably great and important.
July 19, 2022
Such an amazing collection of poetry. Loved every moment.
January 30, 2023
My name is Rat Amor because I have a good little line of talk and because my soul sleeps in a cellar.
February 16, 2011
A Wedding In Hell by Charles Simic
Published by: Harcourt Brace & Company, Orlando Florida, 1994
Kelsey Williams
If I had to describe A Wedding In Hell by Charles Simic in one word, the word would be simplistic. He writes the most brilliant poems, with incredibly powerful messages in a very simplistic way. Simic’s style is one that I would love to try and copy, in my opinion poetry is best when it is clear and understandable, I always hate when I have to read a poem five times before I can get anything out of it. I would have to say that A Wedding In Hell is one of the most relatable collects of poems I have ever read, I find myself reading his poems over again not because I am confused, but because I enjoyed reading them so much. “With its cloudless sky / Of late summer / And its trees shivering / In the first cool breeze / On days when we put all / Our trust into the world / Only to be deceived.”( The World) Simic chooses very deep specific topics, he is incredible at really focusing a poem on something small whether it be an event or an object, and then he condenses his poem into so few words that each word has a powerful punch and the poem collectively has a strong meaning.
Charles Simic has an elegance to his writing, “Heavy mirror carried / Across the street, / I bow to you / And to everything that appears in you, / Momentarily / And never again the same way:”(Miracle Glass Co.) Never before have I ever thought to myself, “wow that was a beautiful sentence,” but after reading the collection I am blow away by the beautiful words and meanings of his poems.
Simic has a very consistent style thorough his collection. When reading his poems I can feel how much time has gone into the crafting, to get the poems’ message to be just right. All of Simic’s poems have relatively short lines, and with the exception of a few, each poem is split up into multiple stanzas, which to me also adds to the simplistic feel of the collection. Before we even get to read the words our eyes see the page and already have an opinion of what we are going to read. When my eyes see a slender column of text, I know I am going to be forced down the page quickly and the poem is probably full of action, and when I see a huge block of long lined text I know I am going to read at a slow pace and the story will be sad or depressing. But even at first glance Simic’s poems put the reader at ease.
Almost every line in the collection is an end-stopped line, this also helps add to the readability and simplisticness of the poems. The end-stopped lines are what really give the poems their pace, Simic finishes his thoughts allowing the reader to slow down and really appreciate the poem.
Published by: Harcourt Brace & Company, Orlando Florida, 1994
Kelsey Williams
If I had to describe A Wedding In Hell by Charles Simic in one word, the word would be simplistic. He writes the most brilliant poems, with incredibly powerful messages in a very simplistic way. Simic’s style is one that I would love to try and copy, in my opinion poetry is best when it is clear and understandable, I always hate when I have to read a poem five times before I can get anything out of it. I would have to say that A Wedding In Hell is one of the most relatable collects of poems I have ever read, I find myself reading his poems over again not because I am confused, but because I enjoyed reading them so much. “With its cloudless sky / Of late summer / And its trees shivering / In the first cool breeze / On days when we put all / Our trust into the world / Only to be deceived.”( The World) Simic chooses very deep specific topics, he is incredible at really focusing a poem on something small whether it be an event or an object, and then he condenses his poem into so few words that each word has a powerful punch and the poem collectively has a strong meaning.
Charles Simic has an elegance to his writing, “Heavy mirror carried / Across the street, / I bow to you / And to everything that appears in you, / Momentarily / And never again the same way:”(Miracle Glass Co.) Never before have I ever thought to myself, “wow that was a beautiful sentence,” but after reading the collection I am blow away by the beautiful words and meanings of his poems.
Simic has a very consistent style thorough his collection. When reading his poems I can feel how much time has gone into the crafting, to get the poems’ message to be just right. All of Simic’s poems have relatively short lines, and with the exception of a few, each poem is split up into multiple stanzas, which to me also adds to the simplistic feel of the collection. Before we even get to read the words our eyes see the page and already have an opinion of what we are going to read. When my eyes see a slender column of text, I know I am going to be forced down the page quickly and the poem is probably full of action, and when I see a huge block of long lined text I know I am going to read at a slow pace and the story will be sad or depressing. But even at first glance Simic’s poems put the reader at ease.
Almost every line in the collection is an end-stopped line, this also helps add to the readability and simplisticness of the poems. The end-stopped lines are what really give the poems their pace, Simic finishes his thoughts allowing the reader to slow down and really appreciate the poem.
August 13, 2008
I am not going to write very much about these poems. I can not say that I "enjoyed" them. I reread them about two or three times. They are small nuggets of surreal landscapes, made more real by a few decidedly candid "keywords" lets call them. Simple images, EASY to imagine, which makes them so realistic. Either way, I liked the no-nonesense approach, I am a wordy person and it was refreshing to read poetry that convayed the same ideas in such few words. I especially enjoyed the tying together of certain sections by images... (ants, leaves) etc.
February 25, 2012
You don't need to be a psychoanalyst to know that you can tell a great deal about a person by what they call their genitalia. Here is a book where the male 'speakers' often refer to their 'sex' and I believe that such a choice reveals the nature of these poems more than most other elements included. Take that as you will.
There are many nice moments in these poems, which is to say that this book will not be remembered. A Wedding in Hell is damned most by being forgettable.
There are many nice moments in these poems, which is to say that this book will not be remembered. A Wedding in Hell is damned most by being forgettable.
August 2, 2010
This is not my absolute favorite Simic, and in fact the first section started off a bit slow and non-resonant for me; however, things got better as I continued on. Gets 4 stars from me for the poems in the second and third sections.
August 3, 2007
He's the new US Poet Laureate, thought I should you know, check him out.
June 20, 2008
Love this one.
October 3, 2010
This collection improved on the previous one he won the Pulitzer for. I can see him moving to his more modern style which first attracted me.
January 30, 2013
Street find. Not usually a poetry reader but this one was very good. I think my two favorite poems in here were: Mad Business and Dark TV Screen
February 16, 2013
Simic at his best. His language is enhanced by his life experances and he is able to make the uncommon common.
July 7, 2009
one of my favorite poetry books of all time
September 9, 2010
Spare but substantial. Simple and intriguingly complex. How does he do it??
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January 29, 2018811.54 S589we 1994
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