Charles Simic

Charles Simic
Born	Dušan Simić 9 May 1938 (1938-05-09) (age 71) Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	United States
Notable award(s)	Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1990) Wallace Stevens Award (2007)

Dušan “Charles” Simić (Serbian: Душан "Чарлс" Симић) (IPA: [/ˈtʃ͡ɑːɻls ˈʂimitɕ͡/]) (born 9 May 1938) is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.^[1]

Biography

Early years

Simic was born in Belgrade, which was then in Yugoslavia. Growing up in war-torn Europe as a child shaped much of his world-view. In an interview from the Cortland Review he said, "Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me. In addition to my own little story of bad luck, I heard plenty of others. I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed in my life." Simic immigrated to the United States with his family in 1954 when he was sixteen. He grew up in Chicago and received his B.A. from New York University. He is professor emeritus of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives on the shore of Bow Lake in Strafford, New Hampshire.

Career

He began to make a name for himself in the early to mid 1970s as a literary minimalist, writing terse, imagistic poems which, like those of William Blake, have their roots in observed objects that serve to extrapolate the universe.

Over the years, Simic's style has come to be considered immediately recognizable. Critics have often referred to Simic poems as "tightly constructed Chinese puzzle boxes." Simic himself has stated: "Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator." The quote intimates Simic's philosophy that true art must be greater than the person who created it.

He writes thoughtfully on such diverse topics as jazz, art, and philosophy. He exerts considerable influence not only as poet, but as translator, essayist and philosopher, opining on the current state of contemporary American poetry. He held the position of poetry editor of The Paris Review, and was replaced by Dan Chiasson.

Simic was one of the judges for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize and continues to contribute poetry and prose to The New York Review of Books.

Simic received the US$100,000 Wallace Stevens Award in 2007 from the Academy of American Poets in recognition of his outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.^[2]

Simic was selected by James Billington, Librarian of Congress, to be the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, succeeding Donald Hall. Billington referred to "the rather stunning and original quality of his poetry".^[3]

Awards

• MacArthur Fellowship (1984-1989)
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1990)
• Wallace Stevens Award (2007)

Bibliography

• What the Grass Says - 1967
• Somewhere Among Us A Stone Is Taking Notes - 1969
• Dismantling The Silence - 1971
• White - 1972
• Return To A Place Lit By A Glass Of Milk - 1974
• Charon's Cosmology - 1977
• School For Dark Thoughts - 1978
• Classic Ballroom Dances - 1980
• Austerities - 1982
• Weather Forecast for Utopia & Vicinity: Poems 1967-1982 - 1983
• Unending Blues - 1986
• The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems - 1989 (1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry )
• The Book of Gods and Devils - 1990
• Hotel Insomnia - 1992
• Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell - 1993 ISBN 1590171705
• A Wedding in Hell - 1994
• Walking the Black Cat - 1996 (National Book Award in Poetry finalist)
• Jackstraws - 1999 (New York Times Notable Book of the Year) ISBN 0156010984
• Night Picnic: Poems - 2001 ISBN 015100630X
• A Fly in the Soup: Memoirs - 2002 ISBN 0472089099
• The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems - 2003 ISBN 015603073X
• Selected Poems: 1963-2003 - 2004 (winner of the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
• My Noiseless Entourage: Poems - 2005 ISBN 0151012148
• Aunt Lettuce, I Want To Peek Under Your Skirt - 2005 (illustrated by Howie Michels)
• Monkey Around - 2006
• Sixty Poems - 2008 ISBN 0156035642
• That Little Something: Poems - 2008 ISBN 0156035391
• Monster Loves His Labyrinth - 2008 ISBN 1931337403
• Army: Memoir. In preparation - 2008

References

1. ^ "Poet Laureate Timeline: 2001-present". Library of Congress. 2009. http://www.loc.gov/poetry/laureate-2001-present.html. Retrieved 2009-01-01. 
2. ^ Academy of American Poets (2 August 2007). "Charles Simic Receives The Wallace Stevens Award". Press release. http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/386. Retrieved 2009-01-01. 
3. ^ Motoko Rich (2 August 2007). "Charles Simic, Surrealist With Dark View, Is Named Poet Laureate". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/books/02poet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2007-08-01. 

External links

• Poems by Charles Simic and biography at PoetryFoundation.org
• Charles Simic Online Resources, Library of Congress
• poets.org biography
• Audio recording (.mp3) of Charles Simic reading at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2003
• The Cortland Review interview
• Biography by Diva Desai
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography, including audio and video clips
• Seven Prose Poems by Charles Simic (in The Cafe Irreal)
• Charles Simic: The Orphan Of Silence; Thesis by Goran Mijuk
• Simic author page and archive from The New York Review of Books
• Simic reading from a collection of his own works
• Video of Charles Simic reading at Boston University's Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture, 2009