A Wedding in Hell

"Provocative . . . a tantalizing, beautiful fusion of visions" from the Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate (Bloomsbury Review).Four paper dolls hold hands like a family. They are cut from a morning newspaper that runs an ad for "heavenly" coffee next to a picture from a war zone. On television, refugees are crowding a road, while on the pay-per-view channel lovers are trading hungry kisses and tearing off each other's clothes. In his new volume of poems, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic juxtaposes the joys of the everydaythe unabashed pleasure of sex, the beauty of natureagainst a haunting landscape of shattered windows, soldiers on the march, stray dogs, homeless men, and a God still making up His mind."Simic is a poet of quiet angst and profound skepticism. His poems reflect this in their brevity and spareness . . . These poems are hard-edged and unsettling, but as you acclimate yourself to Simic's grim outlook,...