Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell by Charles Simic

Trade paperback format. Long out of print, now available in paperback!

InDime-Store Alchemy, poet Charles Simic reflects on the life and work of Joseph Cornell, the maverick surrealist who is one of Americas great artists. Simics spare prose is as enchanting and luminous as the mysterious boxes of found objects for which Cornell is justly renowned.

Praise

Dime-Store Alchemyis the most sustained literary response this far to Cornells boxes, montages, and filmsincisive, freewheeling, dramatica mixture of evocation and observation, as lucid and shadowy as the imagination it celebratesDime-Store Alchemy is a meeting of kindred spirits that is itself a work of art. Edward Hirsch, The New Yorker

A beautiful book that evokes Cornells artistic spirit. Harpers Bazaar

Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, [is] a fascinating long-out-of-print book that explores the eccentric genius of the artist through the insightful and often obsessive lens of the poet Charles Simic, who examines eight of Cornells most remarkable boxes. It is, more than anything, a meditation on beauty and the art of imagination. Simics writing itself is a metaphor for Cornells thoughtful collages, stitching together elements of texts by some of the artists favorite poets and authors.What makes Dime-Store Alchemy most exceptional is the elegant parallel between the poetry of Cornells work and that of Simics narrative interpretation of it, at once an embodiment of and commentary on the power of remix in creation. The Atlantic