Aunt Lettuce, I Want to Peek Under Your Skirt

by Charles Simic, Howie Michels (Illustrator)

This provocative, playful collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Simic and noted illustrator Michels is a saucy Valentine's treat.
Charles Simic, a leading light in the world of poetry, here turns his attention-and imagination -to Eros. Sensual and skillfully wrought, Simic's erotic poems are electrified by brilliantly graphic and lush illustrations by Howie Michels. Excerpts of this collaboration were featured in Tin House's sold-out Sex issue, the magazine's most popular ever. A perfect gift for a lover, this racy and delightful collaboration celebrates the vivid literary pleasure that occurs when words and images get in bed together.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 2005

About the author

U.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.

Reviews

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'd heard Simic was a good poets and tried to read other books of his, and thought maybe I missed something, picked this up in the used book store and found the illustrations better than the poetry, bu this is the type of book an an already well known poet writes so squeeze out another paycheck, nothing really remarkable here.

[Frank Karioris · Rating 3 out of 5]

To say, this is an odd collection, is to understand the veracity of the statement; but to also submerge too heavily the simple lines - of both drawing and poetry - that require a disentangling of the interrelation between 'odd' and 'unique' or 'intriguing'.

[Danica]

I definitely don't understand the contemporary poetry so I will not even venture into rating this tiny volume by a fellow Belgrader. The drawings though, they are something else. Top notch and then some.

[Beelzefuzz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simic's love and lust poems from other collections brought together in one bacchanalian place and illustrated with line drawings. It's fun in a sometimes crass manner, but because I read these elsewhere I could not get to 4 stars. Cleave the cabbage in two.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

These erotic poems are good medicine.

[Дарина Гладун · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Simic's poetry. Michels' illustrations are too vulgar for my taste.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really a big fan of poetry, but the title and book cover design intriqued me, so I gave it a shot. The book is very short, as are the poems themselves, and I suppose that works in the book's favor, as erotic poems become decidedly un-erotic when taken in too strong a dosage.

There are three or four nice poems, and the rest are at least passable. It would be an ideal book to take to the beach with one or two girls, next to a fire at night, drinking wine, passing the book between us, reading poems and pretending we were very wise.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simic likes breasts, food, and food on breasts. One poem, "I'm crazy about her shrimp!", ended with this:

"I'm crazy about her shrimp!"
I shout to the gods above.

in the lines building up to this... climax, he talks about cooking shrimp, sex, and wine on naked tits. in another poem, he talks about tomato juice on naked tits. with a few edits, the "shrimp" poem could be worked into that episode of Seinfeld which has Kramer dancing around the room to tribal music. it all seems more apishly hedonistic than poetic. for dirty, joyful excess, i prefer Bukowski.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simic delivers lyrical images of sex and food.

These poems are texturally rich and conjure up pictures of "roundness" and "juicy" things. This collection includes illustrations. Rather than complement the works, I found them to be grotesque. Several of the poems include seafood, which I found unpalatable because of my personal dislike for seafood and shellfish (I'm also allergic). I'm not crazy about this collection but that's completely due to my personal tastes.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty well love this explicitly and whimsically illustrated collection spanning Simic's career. For Simic, the line dividing the sensuous life of the bedroom and the kitchen is thin and often absent.

[Glen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Erotica care of one of America's most acclaimed poets with some salacious and humorous drawings thrown in. It's a fun little book, especially the thematic links between food and sex, but overall I found it a little bit droll and was glad it was short.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Naughty but nice.

[Holly Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty good sampling of Simic, actually.

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is almost always a pleasure to listen to Glen's reading of poetry and this is no exception. Short, sweet and sexy what more could I want to hear at bedtime. C. Simic is a fun fellow to follow.

[Ellekhall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun and sexy poetry.