The World Doesn't End

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry “One of the truly imaginative writers of our time.” —Los Angles Times Book Review You never know what Charles Simic is up to until you reach the end of the line or the bottom of the paragraph. Waiting for you might be a kiss. Or a bludgeon. A smile at the absurdities of society, or a wistful, grim memory of World War II. He puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak himself in antiquity. Charles Simic has new eyes, and in these wonderful poems and poems-in-prose he lets us see through them.  Each piece is a trapdoor into a world that is funny, grim, and utterly unforgettable. Surrealist Poetry: Where mothers are braids of black smoke and the poor take the place of bait in mousetraps. Absurdist Fiction: Find unexpected humor in the darkest corners of history and the strangest twists of fate. Philosophical Poetry: Bite-sized parables that are by turns streetwise and ancient, playing with everything from Napoleonic soldiers to the Beast of the Apocalypse. Aphoristic Writing: Each line delivers either a kiss or a bludgeon, with an imaginative power that earned Charles Simic the Pulitzer Prize.