Recent Aquisitions: Poetry & a brand new Atari 2600

Charles Simic was a professor at the college I attended and though I passed him many times in the building I never had the opportunity to take a class with him. At the time I was going through the standard late teens/early twenties beat/Bukowski obsession and the thought of investigating Simic further never occurred to me even as my classmates and friends were raving about him.
Recently a friend loaned me "A Fly In My Soup;" Simic's memoir's of his childhood in Serbia, his family's immigration to America & his twenties as a young poet and a military officer. I have refused to read the last page for fear of finishing the book which I've enjoyed so enormously.
Simic's poetry is a lot like the art of Joseph Cornell - whose work Simic admires and has written for. Both are locked up tight in symbolism yet the preciousness of each figure and the personal meaning held within is apparent. The layered depth of his work yields immense detail and meaning.


So, what's better than a Salvation Army that separates its books like a real bookstore would? The poetry section yielded these two gems. The design for the Cummings cover is amazing & I had a feeling that the Simic would be signed and it was:






In the early eighties Atari branded these "The Best Christmas Gift Ever" but apparently someone didn't think so because this one was never removed from the box.