Looking for Trouble

Serbian by birth, brought up under Nazi occupation and transplanted to the United States in his teens, Charles Simic has had the opportunity to distil a highly particular vision of the world. A courageous comic gaiety goes hand in hand with frank recognition of our darker ethical and philosophical dilemmas, while a distinctly European sensibility absorbs, with unpatronising delight, the junk culture and street rhetoric of contemporary urban America. There is no poet quite like him, and the attempt to fix labels always ends in futility. This may be why he is one of America's most admired poets, an example to many of the younger generation and winner of most of the nation's top literary awards. Looking for Trouble gives readers ideal access to his imaginative world, and it supplements his Frightening Toys , published by Faber in 1995 and praised by Mark Ford, in the TLS , for 'its recklessness, its individualism, and its freedom'.