I first read this book about 30 years ago, and have kept coming back to it.

In my opinion, this is one of the best books by a great American surrealist poet. Such poems as "Fear," "Butcher Shop," "The Inner Man," "Fork," "My Shoes," "Ax," "Invention of Nothing," and "errata" are powerful examples of Simic's ability to dig deeper than language, far down into pre-literate culture, to discover primal, one could even say elemental, relationships.

Here is "Fear":

Fear passes from man to man
Unknowing,
As one leaf passes its shudder
To another.

All at once the whole tree is trembling
And there is no sign of the wind. ( )

Brilliant, as is his poetry, and the account of growing up under the Nazis then emigrating to the U.S. is fascinating. ( )

Dark humane poems with a European tinge. Simic's imagination is brilliant, sad, dark, & fun. ( )