52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
72. The book of gods and devils.
There’s a lot of existential dread in this follow up to Simic’s Pulitzer Prizewinner. Images of huge, forbidding skies, deities, children/women grown oversize; fairytales and myths and legends twisted subtly toward the macabre. Simic is growing on me in the slight period between starting the last collection and finishing this one. There was a transitional aspect to reading this: I think I came into it expecting one kind of poem, based on The world doesn’t end, and it took me about half the collection to warm to the rhythm of these more formal poems. I’m no devotee, but there are worse poets, if you like dread. Here’s a representative sample from Part II:
Winter Sunset
Such skies came to worry men
On the eve of great battles:
Clouds soaked in blood of the dying day
That made the horses restless,So the soothsayers were summoned
But kept their mouths shut
About the meaning of it,
Even when shown the naked sword.The gloomy heavens made gloomier
By the shadow play of unknown tribes
And their heroes on the run.
The white church tower of the First CongregationalClutching its bird-shaped weathervane
Against it all, but the village deserted.
Not a soul in sight. The people indoors
Afraid to get up and turn on the lights.Some young farm woman, dress unbuttoned,
A small child on her knees,
Its head turning away from her full breast…
Eyes full of the sky’s terror and luster.
