Confessions of a Poet Laureate

Book excerpt: A NEW YORK REVIEW E-BOOK ORIGINAL As former U.S. poet laureate Charles Simic has said, the secret to our identities lies not in grand events, but in the parentheses between events--and in these brief essays, we get a taste of this great poet's parenthetical observations and recollections. He takes us from his rattling house on a stormy New Hampshire night, to a park bench in Washington Square where two old men sit discussing the women they've known, to a business convention in Topeka where he reads a poem, to the vanished subterranean jazz clubs of old New York, and beyond. Part autobiographical fragment, part waking dream, these pieces are marked by Simic's characteristic wit, audacity, and awe before life's strangeness. Contents include: --Reminiscing about the Night Before --Strangers on a Train --Confessions of a Poet Laureate --The Blustering Blast --The Buster Keaton Cure --On Losing --On the Couch with Philip Roth, at the Morgue with Pol Pot