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Wikipedia / Charles Simic

Dušan Simić (, ; May 9, 1938 – January 9, 2023), known as Charles Simic, was a Serbian American poet and poetry co-editor of The Paris Review. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for The World Doesn't End and was a finalist of the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for Selected Poems, 1963–1983 and in 1987 for Unending Blues. He was appointed the fifteenth United States Poet Laureate in 2007.

Biography

Early years

Dušan Simić was born in Belgrade. In his early childhood, during World War II, he and his family were forced to evacuate their home several times to escape indiscriminate bombing of Belgrade. Growing up as a child in war-torn Europe shaped much of his worldview, Simic stated. 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 brother and mother to join his father in 1954, when he was sixteen. After spending a year in New York, he moved with his family to Oak Park, Illinois, where he graduated from high school. In 1961, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and in 1966, he earned his B.A. from New York University while working at night to cover the costs of tuition.

Career

Simic began to make a name for himself in the early to mid-1970s as a literary minimalist, writing terse, imagistic poems. Critics have referred to Simic's poems as "tightly constructed Chinese puzzle boxes". He himself stated: "Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is merely the bemused spectator."

He was a professor of American literature and creative writing at University of New Hampshire beginning in 1973 and lived in Strafford, New Hampshire. Simic wrote on such diverse topics as jazz, art, and philosophy. He was influenced by Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, and Fats Waller. He was a 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 later replaced by Dan Chiasson. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995, received the Academy Fellowship in 1998, and was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2000.

Simic was one of the judges for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize and continued to contribute poetry and prose to The New York Review of Books. He received the US$100,000 Wallace Stevens Award in 2007 from the Academy of American Poets.

Simic was selected by James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, to be the fifteenth United States Poet Laureate, succeeding Donald Hall. In choosing Simic as the poet laureate, Billington cited "the rather stunning and original quality of his poetry".

In 2011, Simic was the recipient of the Frost Medal, presented annually for "lifetime achievement in poetry".

Simic's extensive papers as well as other material about his work are held at the University of New Hampshire Library Milne Special Collections and Archives.

Personal life and death

Simic married fashion designer Helene Dubin in 1964, and their union produced two children. In 1971, he became an American citizen. Simic died of complications of dementia on January 9, 2023, at age 84.

Awards

Bibliography

Poetry

  1. Collections

  2. 1967:

  3. 1969:

  4. 1971: Dismantling the Silence

  5. 1972: White

  6. 1974: Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk

  7. 1976: Biography and a Lament

  8. 1977: Charon's Cosmology

  9. 1978: Brooms: Selected Poems

  10. 1978: School for Dark Thoughts

  11. 1980: They Forage at Night

  12. 1980: Classic Ballroom Dances

  13. 1982: Austerities

  14. 1983: Weather Forecast for Utopia & Vicinity: Poems, 1967–1982

  15. 1985: Selected Poems, 1963–1983 (1986 Pulitzer Prize finalist; included in Harold Bloom's Western Canon)

  16. 1986: Unending Blues (1987 Pulitzer Prize finalist)

  17. 1989: Pyramids and Sphinxes

  18. 1989: Nine Poems

  19. 1989: The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry)

  20. 1990: The Book of Gods and Devils

  21. 1992: Hotel Insomnia

  22. 1994: A Wedding in Hell: Poems

  23. 1995: Frightening Toys

  24. 1996: Walking the Black Cat: Poems, (National Book Award in Poetry finalist)

  25. 1997:

  26. 1999: Jackstraws: Poems (The New York Times Notable Book of the Year)

  27. 1999:

  28. 2001: Night Picnic,

  29. 2003: The Voice at 3:00am: Selected Late and New Poems

  30. 2004: Selected Poems: 1963–2003 (winner of the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize)

  31. 2005: Aunt Lettuce, I Want to Peek Under Your Skirt (illustrated by Howie Michels)

  32. 2005: My Noiseless Entourage: Poems

  33. 2008: 60 Poems,

  34. 2008: That Little Something: Poems

  35. 2008: The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks,

  36. 2010:

  37. 2013:

  38. 2013:

  39. 2015:

  40. 2017:

  41. 2019:

  42. 2022:

  43. Translations

  44. 1970: Ivan V. Lalić, Fire Gardens

  45. 1970: Vasko Popa, The Little Box: Poems

  46. 1970: Four Modern Yugoslav Poets: Ivan V. Lalić, Branko Miljkovic, Milorad Pavić, Ljubomir Simović

  47. 1979: Vasko Popa, Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems

  48. 1983: Co-translator, Slavko Mihalić, Atlantis

  49. 1987: Tomaž Šalamun, Selected Poems

  50. 1987: Ivan V. Lalić, Roll Call of Mirrors

  51. 1989: Aleksandar Ristović, Some Other Wine or Light

  52. 1991: Slavko Janevski, Bandit Wind

  53. 1992: Novica Tadić, Night Mail: Selected Poems

  54. 1992: Horse Has Six Legs: Contemporary Serbian Poetry

  55. 1999: Aleksandar Ristović, Devil's Lunch

  56. 2003: Radmila Lazić, A Wake for the Living

  57. 2004: Günter Grass, The Günter Grass Reader

  58. 2019: Vasko Popa, Selected Poems

  59. List of poems

Non-fiction

  • 1985: The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry

  • 1990: Wonderful Words, Silent Truth: Essays on Poetry and a Memoir

  • 1992: Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell

  • 1994: The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs

  • 1997: Orphan Factory: Essays and Memoirs

  • 2000: A Fly in the Soup: Memoirs

  • 2003: The Metaphysician in the Dark (University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry Series)

  • 2006:

  • 2008: The Renegade: Writings on Poetry and a Few Other Things

  • 2015: The Life of Images: Selected Prose

See also

References

Profiles

Work

Interviews and review