Sep 14, 16
* Also on my blog.poetry57 s Dave SchaafsmaAuthor 6 books31.7k

RIP Charles Simic, 1/9/23

Hotel Insomnia

I d my little hole,
Its window facing a brick wall.
Next door there was a piano.
A few evenings a month
a crippled old man came to play
"My Blue Heaven."

Mostly, though, it was quiet.
Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat
Catching his fly with a web
Of cigarette smoke and revery.
So dark,
I could not see my face in the shaving mirror.

At 5 A.M. the sound of bare feet upstairs.
The "Gypsy" fortuneteller,
Whose storefront is on the corner,
Going to pee after a night of love.
Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.
So near it was, I thought
For a moment, I was sobbing myself.

Cloud Gathering

It seemed the kind of life we wanted.
Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.
Sunlight in every room.
The two of us walking by the sea naked.

Some evenings, however, we found ourselves
Unsure of what comes next.
tragic actors in a theater on fire,
With birds circling over our heads,
The dark pines strangely still,
Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.

We were back on our terrace sipping wine.
Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?
Clouds of almost human appearance
Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely
With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.

The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.
You lighting a candle, carrying it naked
Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly.
The dark pines and grasses strangely still.
.
An interview with Simic about what HE thinks he is about:

http://artfuldodge.sites.wooster.edu/...

In it Simic talks about folk surrealism, the foundation in Hungarian folk narratives he grew up with, his love of the surreal, generally. Jazz and blues riffing, spontaneous moments, Neruda.

This collection of poems is all for me about magic, about the wonders of invention in the face of some of the horrors in the world. There’s a kind of Eastern European sensibility in the poems and silly spoofing and absurdity. It all makes sense to me, finally, once you see the world enough through his eyes. Infinite surprises.poetry surrealism-dada-absurd52 s Steven Godin2,553 2,697


We were fabulously lucky.
We became dandelions.
Before we were even born
We kept wishing to be dandelions.
Next we found ourselves traveling
Out of the great unknown.
We rode down in a train
Sixteen coaches long,
We sat prim and proper
In our golden yellow dresses.
Others came as black widows,
Little monkeys, and red birds,
And of course many ants,
Snuggled together and looking glum.

— — —

I was a winter fly on the ceiling
In the house of arachnids.
Silence reigned. Queen Insomnia
Sipped tea in the parlour,
Death and Judgment by her side.

The ceiling a polar expedition.
The window a theater of cruelty
With its view of the pretty meadow:
Sheep nibbling wildflowers,
And the sky beyond them vast and empty.

Death notices posted in every room.
The old woman dressing a small child for slaughter
In a convent's school uniform.
The ceiling pale as the flowers.
The red parrot screaming in the parrot house.


america-canada poetry the-balkans17 s Peycho KanevAuthor 23 books308

And that's why he is one of the best poets writing today:

WAR

The trembling finger of a woman
Goes down the list of casualties
On the evening of the first snow.

The house is cold and the list is long.

All our names are included.poetry17 s Nahed.E610 1,772


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15 s ????????? ??????Author 6 books774

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I my poetry I my men, intelligent and suicidal.poetry8 s LW349 72

Un cantare zingaro , imprevedibile e giocoso
uno stile disadorno innerva frasi secche come frustate

Il tono con cui Simic vede e racconta il mondo? questo
Non esagero quando dico che non posso nemmeno pisciare ,senza un libro in mano.
Leggo per addormentarmi e per svegliarmi.
Ho sempre letto al lavoro , in tutti i lavori che ho fatto, nascondendo il libro tra le carte sulla scrivania o nel cassetto mezzo aperto. Anche nella mia bara aperta ,un giorno , reggerò un libro.
"Il libro tibetano dei morti" sarebbe molto appropriato, ma preferirei un manuale sul sesso o le poesie di Emily Dickinson .

Nelle sue poesie c'è la visionarietà dell'uomo insonne , versi tra il sonno e la veglia

Molti Zero
Senza voce l'insegnante si alza davanti a una classe
di pallidi bambini dalle labbra serrate.
La lavagna alle sue spalle tanto nera quanto il cielo
che dista anni luce dalla terra.

È il silenzio che l'insegnante ama,
il gusto dell’infinito che trattiene.
Le stelle come le impronte di denti sulle matite
dei bambini.
Ascoltatelo, dice felice.
-------------------
Poesia d'amore
Tu sei un cuore che pulsa
nella selva oscura.
Sei l'urlo sulla ruota panoramica.
Proprio così bruja
che batti il piede
con le mani ai fianchi.
Notte sulla fiera.
Orchestra di legni.
Due borsaioli ciechi nella folla.tralelabbraelavoce6 s Marwa EletribyAuthor 4 books2,972

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???6 s Zalman49 11

Frankly, Simic already had me hooked into this book by the time I'd finished reading the title. What I found inside did not disappoint. More than a lengthy and doubtless presumptuous analysis, a couple of quotes might suffice to explain why. The title poem, Hotel Insomnia, starts with:

I d my little hole,
Its window facing a brick wall.
Next door there was a piano.
A few evenings a month
A crippled old man came to play
“My Blue Heaven.”

And from the ending of Romantic Sonnet:

Happiness, you are the bright red lining
Of the dark winter coat
Grief wears inside out.

This about myself when I’m remembering,
And your long insomniac’s nails,
O Time, I keep chewing and chewing.

Wish I could be as creative and productive with my bleary-eyed 2-4 AM wide-awake thrash-fests. This is one book I'll keep by my bedside to delve into again and again, not as an antidote for insomnia, but as something to make being awake at night a lot more worthwhile.5 s ???? ???????303 27 Read

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????? ????? ????? ? ???? ? ?????.4 s Rawabi95 45

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???? ????? ??? ?????? ????? ???????? ???? ????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ????? :) 4 s Debbie RobsonAuthor 12 books162

A few months ago someone on Twitter/X posted a George Simic poem. I did ask which collection it was from but didn’t receive a reply. I was so fascinated by the poem that I bought Hotel Insomnia but somehow none of the poems spoke to me that one did. Why? I have no idea.
Despite this, I’m glad I read Hotel Insomnia. There are some gentle poems that whisper of that other poem. The collection is divided up into three parts, simply entitled One, Two and Three.
From One, my favourites are The Congress of the Insomniacs, the powerful Stub of a Red Pencil, Clouds Gathering (my favourite of the whole collection) and Place at the Outskirts, below:

“Gods trying different costumes
In the kitchen of a darkened restaurant,
Then emerging one by one
To serve you.

For the moment, just a glass of red wine
At the table with a view of the empty street,
A row of abandoned buildings,
And the cloudless evening sky.

The philosopher in you says:
The world is a beautiful idea.
Aphrodite with arms missing dressed as a nun
Waiting to take your order.”

The poems in Two didn’t grab me as much. I’m unsure why, except for Missing Child. From Three, Figure in the Landscape, Spring, Some Nights and my second favourite The Old World. Here is the last stanza from At the Vacancy Sign:

“Late afternoon sunlight
With one golden dead fly
On the table .
And the year unknown.
And the hour fugitive.”

Perhaps if I hadn’t read that poem on Twitter and instead come across this book out of the blue I would be giving it five stars instead of four. Mood and preconceived ideas are so important when it comes to enjoying what we choose to read. I’m very thankful though for this wonderful line from The Old World:

“Eternity eavesdropping on time.”3 s Anna20 6

Hotel Insomnia is a collection of poems by the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Charles Simic.

Since this was my first time reading the works of Simic, I did not know what to expect. However, I definitely had a good feeling about this book because of its mysterious and catchy title.

Upon setting my eyes on the first stanza of the first poem, I knew that this book would be a keeper. Simic's unique prose and use of dark yet alluring imagery easily drew me into the stanzas and lines, drinking in the words down to the last drop. He brilliantly crafted his thoughts, observations, and memories of the past and present into beautiful, yet haunting pieces of work.
An air of mystery and placidity inhibited each and every single poem, making me feel unbounded and uncharted all at once. Simic's words had an elusive way of dancing around and around in my head, they wove webs of nostalgia, emptiness, freedom, and isolation into lovely fragmented musings. I quickly realized that his writing style was a bit strange and unique in a able way.
Simic must have been a man of many musings, his thoughts filled with angels and riddles, cemeteries and dolls, silk dresses and darkening woods and sleepless nights. His work is definitely worth modeling after due to its individualistic flare and prose. I am definitely looking forward to indulging myself in his other works in the near future.

Here is a snippet from one of the poems I really enjoyed:

On a long shot, I went searching
For you Miranda, downtown
When the offices empty at five,
Knowing neither the building nor the street.
I had my lust to lead me
With its sleepwalker's stride.

The city, that winter evening,
an opera house on fire.
Hundreds of fleeing faces to examine,
Hundreds of false sightings to pursue,
Only to overtake a complete stranger,

Someone spooked by what my eyes told her,
Someone equally ethereal,
Already lost in the crowd,
Already replaced by someone new.
Until she, too, vanished.

-- The Infinite

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is willing to try a new style of poetry. I am sure you will not regret it.

5 out of 5 stars!2012-book-challenge favorites poetry3 s Bethany641 65

My theory that magical things happen when one meanders through the NF section at the library remains intact! For that is what I was doing when I found Hotel Insomnia.
Whilst browsing the poetry section, I was attracted to its title first, then I picked it up, flipped through it, decided it had great potential to be something I'd , and took it home.

As I said, I d the title first of all; it conjured certain pictures and expectations in my mind that I'd say Charles Siric captured quite well. He pulled me into a deceptively sparse-looking world with bleak rooms whose windows look out onto a bleaker city. He gave beauty to the wee hours of the morning, lying in bed with eyes that won't stay closed; listening and remembering.

I think I have a new favourite poet!poetry wishlist3 s IslamAuthor 2 books538

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3 s Tyrone_Slothrop (ex-MB)726 100

Fare poesia con scarpe e forchette

Poeta strano, Simic, disadorno e prosaico come lo sguardo su stampelle, scarpe, insetti può essere. Non tutte le poesie funzionano perfettamente, ma ci sono alcune risonanze originali e scorrette al punto giusto:
I it when Achilles gets killed .
E l'attenzione verso le cose, il mondo materiale apre spazi poco esplorati dalla poesia: This chair was once a student of Euclid. .

Simic mi convince meno quando il fraseggio diviene frammentario, con versi composti da due sole parole, con una sintassi inesistente che restituisce visioni immobili e alla lunga un poco asfittiche e sterili - è a tutti gli effetti una poesia di sostantivi, radicata nelle cose che sfilano sotto i nostri occhi, come scrive Andrea Molesini nell'ottima postfazione.europei poesia2 s ??? ??????Author 1 book1,196

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