Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Simic, Charles (Vol. 130) - Tam Lin Neville (review date Spring 1993)

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Tam Lin Neville (review date Spring 1993)

SOURCE: “In a Room Where We Are Absent,” in Hungry Mind Review, Spring, 1993, p. 32.

[In the following review, Neville notes the painful subject matter but eloquent writing in The Horse Has Six Legs, edited and translated by Simic.]

I've always thought it eerie the way a voice from another culture can come through in the English of a good translation. it's as though a ghost had passed through a wall. “Poetry is what is retained in translation,” not what is lost, poet Charles Simic argues. After reading The Horse Has Six Legs, I have to agree with his optimism.

The book begins with “Oral Poetry, Women's Songs,” a group of early folk poems collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I was drawn to the raw, earthy ones.

The sky is strewn with stars
And the wide meadow with sheep.
The sheep have no shepherd
Except for crazy Radoye
And he has fallen...

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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