Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Simic, Charles (Vol. 130) - James Atlas (review date February 1975)

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James Atlas (review date February 1975)

SOURCE: “Autobiography of the Present,” in Poetry, Vol. 125, No. 5, February, 1975, pp. 295-99.

[In the following review, Atlas praises Simic's ability to condense great meaning into single images in Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk.]

Charles Simic's second collection [Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk] draws on the practices of Surrealism, but his work owes more to East European poetry, with its emphasis on a condensed, sombre, even ballad-like language. Simic is a native of Yugoslavia, and has translated a number of poets from there, most notably Vasko Popa, with whom he has obvious affinities; his poems possess the same incantatory powers, the same cunning and story-telling art. Nor is there any falling-off from his first, much-praised volume, Dismantling the Silence, except for an occasional repetition of images; in some ways, this book seems even subtler in its...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Hayden Carruth (review date Summer 1971)
   2. James Atlas (review date February 1975)
   3. Richard Jackson (essay date Winter 1980)
   4. Peter Schmidt (essay date Fall 1982)
   5. Bruce Bennett (review date 12 March 1983)
   6. Charles Simic with Sherod Santos (interview date 1984)
   7. Kenneth Funsten (review date 16 March 1986)
   8. Peter Stitt (review date Spring 1987)
   9. Marci Janas (review date Spring 1991)
   10. Steven Cramer (review date January 1992)
   11. Ileana A. Orlich (essay date Spring 1992)
   12. Edward Hirsch (review date 21 December 1992)
   13. Lisa Zeidner (review date 21 March 1993)
   14. Tam Lin Neville (review date Spring 1993)
   15. Philip Miller (essay date Summer 1993)
   16. Scott Edward Anderson (review date November-December 1993)
   17. Judith Kitchen (review date Winter 1995)
   18. Christopher Merrill (review date 19 March 1995)
   19. Helen Vendler (essay date 1995)
   20. Charles Simic with Molly McQuade (interview date 1995)
   21. David Sofield (review date 13 January 1996)
   22. David Bafer (review date April 1996)
   23. Paul Breslin (review date July 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright