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The Voice at 3 A.M. [1]

Poetry [2]
1.17.23

Award-winning and former U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, who died last week at the age of eighty-four, was best known for his surrealist and often devastatingly funny poems. His poem “The Voice at 3 A.M.” reads in its entirety: “Who put canned laughter / Into my crucifixion scene?” In “Eyes Fastened With Pins [3],” Simic depicts a scene in which death is looking for “Someone with a bad cough, / But the address is somehow wrong, / Even death can’t figure it out.” Inspired by Simic, write a poem that mixes dark humor with a serious subject matter. How does integrating humor help balance and enliven the voice in your poem?


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/the_voice_at_3_am

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/the_voice_at_3_am [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/poetry [3] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42952/eyes-fastened-with-pins