granting both James Tate and Charle...

granting both James Tate and Charles Simic had published individual works in Chicago Review, this metrical composition from the Summer 1971 issue depicts a unique collaborative adventure SIMIC explains how it came about:

Tate and I wrote the series during one long night of drinking wine and listening to jazz. We had a unfinished idea that we wanted a metrical composition in the spirit of Baudelaire, a kind of homage employing the cliches of French Symbolist verse I remember being dazzled by the agency of Tate's seemingly endless inventions. He came up with many more terrific images, however we kept them without of the poem for the sake