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Charles Simic (9 May 1938)
Quotations
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''Only brooms
Charles Simic (b. 1938), Yugoslav-U.S. poet. Brooms (l. 1-5). . . American Poetry Anthology, The. Daniel Halpern, ed. (1975) Avon Books.
Know the devil
Still exists,
That the snow grows whiter
After a crow has flown over it,''
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''And then finally there's your grandmother
Charles Simic (b. 1938), Yugoslav-U.S. poet. Brooms (l. 55-58). . . American Poetry Anthology, The. Daniel Halpern, ed. (1975) Avon Books.
Sweeping the dust of the nineteenth century
Into the twentieth, and your grandfather plucking
A straw out of the broom to pick his teeth.''
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''They are sworn enemies of lyric poetry.
Charles Simic (b. 1938), Yugoslav-U.S. poet. Brooms (l. 17-21). . . American Poetry Anthology, The. Daniel Halpern, ed. (1975) Avon Books.
In prison they accompany the jailer,
Enter cells to hear confessions.
Their short-end comes down
When you least expect it.''
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''There are knives that glitter like altars
Charles Simic (b. 1938), Yugoslav-U.S. poet. Butcher Shop (l. 9-14). . . New Naked Poetry, The; Recent American Poetry in Open Forms. Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey, eds. (1976) The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
In a dark church
Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile
To be healed.
There's a woden block where bones are broken,
Scraped clean—a river dried to its bed''
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''This strange thing must have crept
Charles Simic (b. 1938), Yugoslav-U.S. poet. Fork (l. 1-4). . . American Poetry Anthology, The. Daniel Halpern, ed. (1975) Avon Books.
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird's foot
Worn around the cannibal's neck.''
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