Here Charles Simic, one of contemporary America’s most admired poets, reflects on the art of the homegrown American surrealist Joseph Cornell. 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 boxes–objects 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 Alchemy is both an entrancing meditation on the nature of art and a perfect introduction to a major American artist
by one of his peers–a book that can be perused at length or dipped into at leisure again and again.
