Book Report: My Noiseless Entourage by Charles Simic

My Noiseless Entourage: Torgo disapproves

Ah, the 64-page collection of short poems. On just the ride home from the library, then half of the ride in to work the next day, I can finish the book and have time to reread the poems I liked.

That being said, I've become increasingly disappointed with Charles Simic. He was one of the poets who made me want to be a poet. His poems are short, silly, bizarre, dark, yet perfectly clear. Non-poets tend to like him, too.

But as he's grown older (or, as I have), it seems more and more of his poems just tread water in a murky, threatening ocean that never reveals its monsters. What's worse, it promises great monsters, terrible things, incredible, lively, astounding things. But they're always just lurking.

In "My Noiseless Entourage," from 2005, Simic still manages some of his brilliant images:

"At the funeral, I thought I had much to say,
When in truth I had nothing.
I was just one more crow
Trailing after the pallbearers"
(from "Slurred Words")

and this:
"One chair
That can't help creak at night
As if a spider
Let itself down
By a thread
To hang over it
With the chair quaking
At the outcome."
("One Chair")

There's also a clever poem called "Used Clothing Store" in which the clothes of presumably deceased former owners act as guides and ghosts:
"Dead men's hats are rolling
On the floor, hurrying
To escort you out the door."

But over the course of the book, it's just not enough to engage me as a reader. The language is tired, devoid of spark. Simic seems less like a macabre storyteller and more like a man tired by the world's hauntings.

I won't take the time to quote the uninteresting poems -- what's the point? Perhaps the best way of appreciating Simic is in small bits, a poem in the New Yorker here and there, so his dark vision stands apart, not weighed down by its own drudgery.