The Imaginative World of Charles Simic

By

Diva Desai

Poetry By Charles Simic

• Austerities, (Braziller 1982, Secker & Warburg 1983)
• A Wedding in Hell, (Harcourt Brace 1994)
• Biography and a Lament, (Bartholomew's Cobble 1976)
• The Book of Gods and Devils, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1990)
• Charon's Cosmology, (Braziller 1977)
• Classic Ballroom Dances, (Braziller l980)
• Dismantling the Silence, (Braziller 1971, Jonathan Cape 1971)
• Frightening Toys, (Faber and Faber 1995)
• Hotel Insomnia, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1992) 
• Jackstraws, (Harcourt Brace l999)
• Looking for Trouble, (Faber and Faber 1997)
• Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Mil, (Braziller 1974) 
• Selected Poems 1963-1983, (Braziller 1985, Secker & Warburg 1986)
• Selected Poems l963-1983, revised and expanded edition, (Braziller 1990)   
• Somewhere Among us a Stone is Taking Notes, (Kayak 1969) 
• What the Grass Says, (Kayak l967)
• Somewhere Among us a Stone is Taking Notes, (Kayak 1969) 
• Unending Blues, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1986)
• Walking the Black Cat, (Harcourt Brace 1996)
• Weather Forecast for Utopia and Vicinity, (Station Hill 1983) 
•  White, (The New Rivers Press 1972, Logbridge-Rhodes 1980)
• The World Doesn't End, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1989) 

From high school to the present, Charles Simic has been a role model for many young and old with his unique view. Life was not always easy for Simic.  Simic lived in Yugoslavia during World War II. Simic had a hard childhood with the war overshadowing his childhood experiences. Simic writes many poems that relate to his distinctive experiences and let the reader now more about his past and his culture. Simic had one chance to be free from the world of hunger and poetry but many Yugoslavians did not get the chance to experience what he did. In his good fortune, Simic moved to the U.S. with his mother and brother to start a new life. He then began writing and his first poem was published in 1958 while in high school.

Simic’s first interest in poetry came from his close friends and began "When I noticed in high school that one of my friends was attracting the best looking girls by writing them sappy love poems."  Simic was never rich and could not afford to go to college because of the high expense and because of the stress it would cause for his parents. His father wanted him to become an artist but was an optimist who thought that the money for college would one day appear. Simic overcame that obstacle by working night shifts to pay for college and studying and attending classes in the morning. He then continued with his writing and graduated from the University of New York with a bachelor’s degree from learning during the night and working during the day to pay for college admission.

Despite this hard point in his career, Simic published about 60 books of poetry and eventually won many awards for the writing. His book of prose poems The World Doesn't End was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1990. His previous volumes of poetry include Kerns Cosmology (1977), nominated for the National Book Award, and Classic Ballroom Dances (1980), which won the 1980 di Castagnola Award and the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award. Walking the Black Cat (1996) was also nominated for the National Book Award. Charles Simic has received the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the PEN Translation Prize, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1983, he received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

At the root of all of these accomplishments are many of the poets that influenced Simic and his writing. These people helped teach Simic and change his perception of poetic language. This is revealed in his works, which display a variety of influences, including those of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Yugoslavian poet Vasko Popa, American poets from Walt Whitman to Theodore Roethke, and French surrealists such as André Bréton and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Today, Charles Simic is a Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. He has a wife named Helene and two kids, Anna and Philip. What would Simic have done if he were not a poet? He would have liked to own a small restaurant and do his own cooking. The dishes he prefers are mostly Mediterranean, and he would have friends to work as waiters. This dream is interesting because in the world of poverty of his childhood, he did not dream about being as wealthy as a doctor or lawyer. Instead he has dreamt small and accomplished much. He is a role model for the many young poets of the world.