Responsible viewing: Charles Simic's Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell

Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 1998 by Morris, Daniel

4In On the Grotesque, Harpham writes: UI argue that the grotesque appears to us to occupy a margin between 'art' and something `outside of or 'beyond' art. In other words, it serves as a limit to the field of art and can be seen as a figure for a total art that recognizes its own incongruities and paradoxes" (xxii).

5For a further discussion of "My Shoes" in the context of his autobiographical prose writings, see my essay "My Shoes": Charles Simic's Self-Portraits," a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 11.1 (1996): 109-27.

6In a notebook entry, Simic suggests his interest in juxtaposing sacred and profane materials: "If I make everything at the same time a joke and a serious matter, it's because I honor the eternal conflict between life and art, the absolute and the relative, the brain and the belly, etc. . . No philosophy is good enough to overcome a toothache. . . that sort of thing" (Wonderful Words 87) .

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