Dime-Store Alchemy perfectly pairs the mundane and the magical to capture Joseph Cornell's distinctive and various constructions, in boxes and otherwise. After looking at his boxes for decades, I now know their maker had the same offbeat, startling quality. The poet Charles Simic has produced a short, idiosyncratic, meditative discourse, with illustrations, on Cornell, his life on Utopia Boulevard, and his compelling enigmatic boxes.

A poet writing about an artist produces a third work of art, and so this relaxed and lovely writing is highly recommended for the triple pleasure of Cornell's constructions, Simic poetic insights, and the coming together of the two in this work.

Beautiful. Moving. ( )

I've always loved the art of Joseph Cornell; these poems, not so much.

If you don't know Cornell's work, he was an artist, sculptor, and experimental filmmaker, influenced by the surrealists and best know for "assemblage"--creating wooden boxes filled with what seem to be randomly found objects that generate a meaning of their own. You can see some of his boxes here.

For me, Simic's poems--most of which are short prose pieces describing what he imagines as Cornell's typical daily activities--did not really evoke the same response as the art itself. There are few images, and the details of Cornell's unusual life remain buried, except for the short introduction to the book. Many of the poems incorporate brief quotes jotted down in Cornell's journals.

The book does include a small but nice selection of full-color photos of several boxes. But as one who was introduced to Cornell by Elizabeth Bishop's poems, I was disappointed. ( )

This adorable book is a pleasure to hold in the hand! 7.25" x 5" and bound in midnight blue cloth lettered in silver and with a Cornell image applied to the front cover it the perfect size and shape for this group of appreciations and quotations from Joseph Cornell's notes by the poet Charles Simic. I'm in love! But it is only fair to admit that I was a beeg fan of the work of both men before I ever saw this volume. It would be the perfect gift for that quirky, discerning friend. Contains an attractive center section of small colored plates of Cornell works. ( )

Fascinating conversation between Simic and the dead Cornell: surreal, maccabre, joyous. ( )