Dime-Store Alchemy

"Dime-Store Alchemy is a collection of crystalline paragraphs, of irreplaceable miniatures, it is an act of homage, an ideal commentary, suffused with the peculiar charm, the oneiric energy of its subject, it is pure illumination, Simic at his very best." --Mark Strand

"A beautiful book that evokes Cornell's artistic spirit." --Harper's Bazaar

"It's hard to do justice to the charm and power of Joseph Cornell's boxes . . . Appropriately, this study is neither a straightforward critical account of Cornell's art nor a merely literary embellishment of it, but rather a parallel text: written by Simic ( Hotel Insomnia ), one of our best poets, it includes his own poems and reminiscences, as well as quotations from a variety of other writers. Simic mingles biography and critical discussion with selections of writings from the artist's notebooks. The book emerges as a piece of writing constructed along the enigmatic lines of Cornell's art. And that art, as Simic sees it, gathers from the scattered pieces of the American past a new, redeeming reality; at heart, this art is a religious practice. Only seemingly random, Simic's approach develops both the plain detail of Cornell's life and illuminates the nature of his work." --Publisher's Weekly