Walking the Black Cat

by Charles Simic (1996) Published by Harcourt, Brace & Company. 83 pages.
Reviewed 28 July 2007



What’s great about Charles Simic is you never know when to take him seriously. This is the second book of poetry I’ve read by him; the first was “The World Does Not End,” an earlier book that won a Pulitzer Prize. “Walking the Black Cat” is both funnier and creepier than its predecessor.
If you’ve never read Charles Simic before, the key thing is to prepare for a lot of disjointed images. A lot of people have no patience for this, and who can blame them? Why force yourself through a book of poetry when the job of making sense of everything has been outsourced to you the reader? Why not just shut the book and go look for somebody who’s willing to tell you a story and make sense of what’s going on?
Of course, if you read, say, poetry by Shakespeare or Milton, you’ll encounter plenty of references, terms and phrasings that make it incomprehensible to the modern reader, but most probably you’ll also be presented with an infrastructure of footnotes, glossaries and critical essays that will help you find your way through. Underneath all the obscurity there is usually an orderly, understandable system of poetic symbolism.
One of Simic’s talents is to simulate that sense of confusion, to give us a sense that his poems have been salvaged from some different age, a different world, that with just the right key, it would all make sense. But there never will be a decoding ring for Simic’s puzzles. While Shakespeare’s references to Greek myth and the Chronicles of English history can all be unearthed and dusted off, there will never be anyone to tell us what, exactly, Charles Simic means when he says that Happiness “sat over a dish of vanilla custard without ever touching it!” Even when identifiable figures appear, as they often do, their actions are difficult to interpret. Why is the ghost of Hamlet’s father wandering around a Vegas motel? What does it mean when Adam says the “secret of the musical matchbox” has been stolen from him?
There are frequent references in this book to ghosts, and to hotels, cafés and casinos visited by the dead. There is a sense that these poems are all stories told by a man who has seen the most important figures in his life pass on to another world. He is left alone to tell stories he can’t completely understand. He has precious little real information at his disposal, but a wealth of inklings and dark intuitions.
There are other elements, too. Strange bits of comedy, as when a man demands that his pet canary sing in exchange for the privilege of being able to witness the act of lovemaking. And a few poems that strike a surprisingly candid tone, such as “Slaughterhouse Flies” or “Little Unwritten Book,” which tells the story of a beloved cat who disappeared years ago. The owner still goes out each morning and calls for the cat and leaves a saucer of milk on the porch, to no avail.
Some of the poems are a little weak, such as “The Something.” At his worst, Simic seems like he’s just fiddling around with words, creating little formulaic oddities. But these poems are few; mostly, this book is filled with stylish, enjoyable, spooky morsels of verse.