Simic

Charles Simic's poem "My Mother Was a Braid of Black Smoke" appears in New and Selected Poems, 1962-2012. The poem is the story of the poet's genesis, and it is difficult for the reader to distinguish between what is actual memory and what is the impression or imagination of the speaker. The first stanza starts, "My mother was a braid of black smoke." The imagery in this stanza, with his mother's "swaddling," conveys the sense that Simic's childhood was not a wealthy or happy one. The cities were "burning cities," perhaps reference to the outbreak of war. When the speaker says "We met many others who were just like us," the reader gets the sense that they were outcasts. This imagery is in direct contradiction with the second stanza's imagery. For instance, the second stanza refers to gypsies, and distinguishes the speaker's family from the gypsies. "I was stolen by the gypsies. My parents stole me right back," is the first line of the second stanza. He describes the "caravan" and "sucking the dark teat of my / new mother." The speaker then claims that when his mother took him back, he was sitting in "the long dining room table eating / my breakfast with a silver spoon." The imagery of his "two" fathers is also ambiguous as if to suggest that the narrator had a double life, or a childhood of conflicted identity.

The next few stanzas take on the shape of paragraphs. The style is somewhere between poetry and prose. The third stanza begins, "She's pressing me gently with a hot steam iron." The imagery of being a puppet blends in soon with imagery of the war and difficult times. "Never since the beginning of the world has there been so little light. Our winter afternoons have been known at times to last a hundred years." (111). Imagery of poverty returns,...

"My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked until its sparks lit up the cellar." The word "cellar" and the word "collar" have consonance.
Simic switches from a personal and autobiographical theme to a universal and historical one. He describes himself as a "Napoleonic soldier" and states that it is "almost two hundred years later," (112). The surreal imagery continues, as his hair is "four feet long" before he snips it off with a saber, running from the Germans and the Russians both. The wartime imagery is gripping the speaker and he continues while discussing the theories of Freud. Freud becomes a character, and they both look at shoes in the window. Simic is asking the reader to apply the Freudian theory of the subconscious mind and symbolism to the dreamlike imagery of the poem. The imagery is disconnected and disjointed, like memories, dreams, and reflections.

Supernatural imagery comprises the next few verses or chapters. First, the speaker describes the Beast of the Apocalypse, and how he (who? Freud?) has it by the tail. Using a confluence of images from past and present, the speaker discusses computers and his grandmother in one sentence. Levitation and ghosts are also included in the imagery that blends the real, the surreal, and the unreal. A schoolroom image appears next, a frequent symbol in dreams. "Ghost stories written as algebraic equations" blends the surreal and mystical with the concrete image of a kid in the classroom writing mathematical equations on the chalkboard. Before it is "quiet again," the white chalk "squeaks," and then the speaker returns to the war.