Charles_Simic [sim-ik]

Charles Simic

[sim-ik]

Charles Simic (born Dušan Simić, May 9, 1938 in Belgrade, Serbia) is a Serbian-American poet and the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States. He is co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. Simic is the 2007 recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. This $100,000 (US) prize recognizes outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.

Biography

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.

Poetry

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 and Meghan O'Rourke are currently the poetry editors for The Paris Review.

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

Poet Laureate

On August 2, 2007, Simic was selected by James Billington, Librarian of Congress, to be the 15th 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".

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
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)
Night Picnic: Poems - 2001
The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems - 2003
Selected Poems: 1963-2003 - 2004 (winner of the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
My Noiseless Entourage : Poems - 2005
Aunt Lettuce, I Want To Peek Under Your Skirt - 2005 (illustrated by Howie Michels)
Monkey Around - 2006
Sixty Poems - 2008
That Little Something: Poems - 2008
Monster Loves His Labyrinth - 2008
Army: Memoir. In preparation - 2008