The title of Charles Simic's latest collection, My Noiseless Entourage, suggests the nature of this collection, shadowy thoughts that intrude, jostling the memory like the ghosts of friends and neighbors walking one step behind on a long, winding country road with evening pushing in. These are the subterranean murmurs no one acknowledges but everyone hears: man and beast, the groaning voices, shape-shifters seen from the corner of the eye. Provocative and visual, casting thoughts like scattered jewels, begging to be picked up, examined, remembered, Simic's poetry is brilliant and satisfying.

Addressing both the mundane and the metaphysical, everything is on the table for consideration: "In the graveyard where he collects the rent/ Or in the night sky/ Where we address our complaints to him." (The Absentee Landlord)

In "The Role of Insomnia in History", the personal coexists with the impersonal:

"The mind is a palace
Walled with mirrors.
The mind is a country church,
Overrun with mice."

"When dawn breaks,
The saints kneel,
The tyrants feed their hounds
Chunks of bloody meat."

"All I've ever done
It seems- is go poking
in the ruins with a stick
Until I was covered
With soot and ashes..." (December 21)