A wedding in hell

Four paper dolls hold hands like a family. They are cut from a morning newspaper that runs an ad for "heavenly" coffee next to a picture from a war zone. On television, refugees are crowding a road, while on the pay-per-view channel lovers are trading hungry kisses and tearing off each other's clothes.

In his new volume of poems, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic juxtaposes the joys of the everyday - the unabashed pleasure of sex, the beauty of nature - against a haunting landscape of shattered windows, soldiers on the march, stray dogs, homeless men, and a God still making up His mind.