Contents

1. Dedication
2. from WONDERFUL WORDS, SILENT TRUTH
3. Why I Like Certain Poems More than Others
4. Reading Philosophy at Night
5. Chinese Boxes and Puppet Theaters
6. Notes on Poetry and Philosophy
7. from THE UNEMPLOYED FORTUNE-TELLER
8. The Flute Player in the Pit
9. Food and Happiness
10. The Little Venus of the Eskimos
11. Fried Sausage
12. Elegy in a Spider’s Web
13. Shop, Le Bacarès
14. No Cure for the Blues
15. from ORPHAN FACTORY
16. Charles the Obscure
17. In Praise of Invective
18. Orphan Factory
19. The Trouble with Poetry
20. Cut the Comedy
21. The Poetry of Village Idiots
22. Fearful Paradise
23. Night Sky
24. from THE METAPHYSICIAN IN THE DARK
25. In Praise of Folly
26. The Devil Is a Poet
27. The Power of Ambiguity
28. Buster Keaton
29. Poetry and History
30. The Romance of Sausages
31. Poetry: The Art of Memory
32. Stargazing in the Cinema: On Joseph Cornell
33. Literature and the Gods: Roberto Calasso
34. from MEMORY PIANO
35. Saul Steinberg
36. The Singing Simics
37. Tsvetaeva: The Tragic Life
38. Adam’s Umbrella
39. from THE RENEGADE
40. The Renegade
41. Reading About Utopia in New York City
42. Salvation Through Laughter
43. The Life of Images
44. The Powers of Invention
45. UNCOLLECTED
46. The True Adventures of Franz Kafka’s Cage
47. My Secret
48. Oh, What a Lovely War!
49. Insomnia’s Philosopher
50. About the Author
51. Also by Charles Simic
52. Credits
53. Copyright
54. About the Publisher