"Poems . . . like folk tales told by a child with an impishly surrealistic streak" from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The World Doesn't End (Library Journal). In this volume, "Simic writes so simply that his words fall like drops of water, but they ripple outward to evoke an ominous and numinous world" (The Washington Post Book World). He fills the wee hours of his poetry with angels and pigs, riddles and cemeteries. With empty offices and dolls that smile. With the sound of bare feet upstairs and a single kiss before the shadows converge. His is a rich, haunted world of East European memory and American present-a world of his own creation, one always full of luminous surprise. "The poems . . . come from a vision of the world that, once experienced, prevents us from ever dozing again, that prevents us, for that matter, from feeling confidently awake." -Los Angeles Times "One of the most original poets writing today, Simic has a gift for startling juxtapositions . . . Homely images, in Simic's hands, take on an eerie combination of the marvelous and the absurd . . . There are few poets writing today whose sense of wonder is so palpable." -Library JournalPraise for Charles Simic "Few contemporary poets have been as influential-or as inimitable-as Charles Simic." -The New York Times Book Review "He has infused American poetry with the freshest and most original style and imagery since e.e. cummings." -St. Louis Post-Dispatch "His poems are crowded with uncanny presence, which he challenges with flirtatious directness." -The New Yorker