Dime-Store Alchemy : The Art of Joseph Cornell

InDime-Store Alchemy, poet Charles Simic re?ects on the life and work of Joseph Cornell, the maverick surrealist who is one of America's great artists. Simic's spare prose is as enchanting and luminous as the mysterious boxes of found objects for which Cornell is justly renowned. In a work that is in various degrees biography, criticism, and sheer poetry, Simic tells the story of Cornell's life and illuminates the hermetic mysteries of his extraordinary boxesobjects in which private obsessions were alchemically transformed into enduring works of art. Simic sees Cornell's work as exemplifying a distinctively American aesthetic, open to the world, improvisatory, at once homemade and universal, modest and teasing and profound. Full of unexpected riches,Dime-Store Alchemyis both an entrancing meditation on the nature of art and a perfect introduction to a major American artist by one of his peersa book that can be perused at length or dipped into at leisure again and again.

CHARLES SIMIC is a poet, essayist, and translator. He teaches American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. He has published five books of essays, a memoir, numerous translations, and sixteen collections of poetry, the most recent of which is The Voice at 3:00 AM. Among the many literary awards Simic has received are a MacArthur Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in New Hampshire.