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Poet Charles Simic taken at the City University of New York on May 13, 2003.
Richard Drew/AP
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Richard Drew/AP
Poet Charles Simic taken at the City University of New York on May 13, 2003.
Richard Drew/AP
Charles Simic, in his How to Psalmize, describes poetry as follows:
it’s a piece of meat
carried away by thieves
distract the guard dog
Former US Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, MacArthur genius and professor Charles Simic died this week at the age of 84.
His poetry could be read like brilliant, urgent bulletins posted on the side of the human mind. He was born in Belgrade, then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was in the click of a Nazi jackboot just in time for World War II. As Charles recalled in his 1988 poem “Two Dogs,”
a little white dog ran into the street
and entwined around the legs of the soldiers.
The kick made him fly as if he had wings.
That’s what I keep seeing!
Night coming down. winged dog.
“I had a little part without words/In a bloody epic,” he wrote in a poem called “a cameo appearance.” “I was / bombed and one of humanity to escape.”
I think of that line to this day when I see lines of humans fleeing their homes, their history and their loved ones in Ukraine, Ethiopia and Syria with a single pair of shoes. There is a poem inside each of those guys.
Charles Simic did not hear English until he came to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, USA, as a teenager. He attended the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Lightning can strike him twice. — then became Copy Kid chicago sun-times He attended night school at the University of Chicago. And he learned from the city:
“…the city was engulfed in smoke, factory workers’ faces covered in dirt, waiting for buses. An immigrant’s paradise, one might say,” Charles recalled. Paris review“I had Swedish, Polish, German, Italian, Jewish, and black friends who took turns explaining America to me.”
“Chicago gave me my first American identity,” he said.
“Why do you write?” you ask. He replied, “I am writing to afflict God and make death laugh.”
Charles Simic lived, laughed, and taught at the University of New Hampshire, while also writing prolifically and gorgeously about life, death, love, animals, insects, food, and anything that inspires the imagination. rice field. As he wrote in The Initiate,
The sky was full of running clouds and skyscrapers.
Round and round quietly.All over the city, I heard the pins drop.
believe me.
I thought I heard the pin drop and went looking for it.
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