Chris Faatz in Powell’s Books:
Any new book by Charles Simic is a cause for celebration.
Old men have bad dreams,
So they sleep little.
They walk on bare feet
Without turning on the light,
Or they stand leaning
On gloomy furniture
Listening to their hearts beat.You can get caught up in these poems, haunted for days by an image, torn asunder by a line. This is the mark of a great poet, that he or she can speak so directly and so poignantly to our realities, even when the words chosen come from the realm of the wonderful, the magical, the surreal, the thoroughly unexpected.
More here.