Posted on 08/03/2007 3:04:11 PM PDT by joan
by Chris Georg
The Yugoslav-born poet Charles Simic has been announced by the Library of Congress to be the new United States’ poet laureate. This way the present co-Poetry Editor of “The Paris Review” will become the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States. He will replace Donald Hall in the Poet Laureate program that promotes poetry across the nation.
Charles Simic was born in 1938 in Belgrade and he emigrated along with his family in the United States in 1953. He learned English and he later graduated from the same high school that Ernest Hemingway had attended, Oak Park High School. This was also the place where Simic started to write poetry.
Although he had not been a native English speaker Charles Simic managed to make himself famous for his literary style in short time. In the mid 70s Simic was already known for writing imagistic poems similar to those written by famous William Blake. His first collection was published in 1967, being titled “What the Grass Says”.
But Simic did not stop to poetry or literature and he has become famous also as a translator and essayist; he has written also on different topics such as art, literature and American poetry, philosophy or music. For 34 years Charles Simic was also a teacher at the University of New Hampshire and he was named Professor Emeritus of creative writing and literature.
In 1990 Simic won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his book of prose poems “The World Doesn’t End”. However, this is just one important prize among others for Simic, as he also won the Edgar Poe Award, the PEN Translation Prize and many other awards and prizes. Just after he was announced to be name U.S. next Poet Laureate Simi has received another honor: the 14th annual Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Simic has stated that he is “overwhelmed” by the Library of Congress’ selecting him to be the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States.
zmajcek, I am sure you are glad for news of talented and interesting Serbs.
Unlike Simic, I am underwhelmed by this appointment. Is this guy going to be another tool for the left like Maya Angelou?
Likely potential...lots of disconnected, dreamlike thinking, lots of feelings, even those out of context, ‘sound bits’ of emotion, ‘in touch’ with ‘human atoms’, whatever that means. I have enjoyed the imagery he evokes...allows dreamers to dream more..thats a legitiate endeavor in a free society..progress often based on dreams as we all know..best that the job has no official responsibility...because of his popularity, the potential for his misuse is real, as you have pointed out re Angelou.
Is he Serbian, or is he American?
he’s serbian-american.
that makes him better than you
because you’re just an american!
/s
He’s American but an ethnic Serb. He survived, as a tiny boy, WWII in Belgrade which was bombed by the Nazis, occupied by the Nazis, then bombed by the allies too as they helped a communist, Tito into power. Then he and his family a failed escape attempt before finally, years later, were able to come to America where his father was.
I read an interview with him last night. He said he started writing poetry in order to meet chicks.
“....another tool for the left like Maya Angelou?”
here’s a peek at him from 1999:
A State of One’s Own
From Charles Simic
I’ll be surprised if, a few years from now, there are many traces in Kosovo of Serbs ever having lived there. Jeremy Harding’s article (LRB, 19 August) makes this plain. ‘Of course the monasteries and churches should be cared for,’ Noel Malcolm exclaimed in a recent op-ed piece, in which he called for independence, but I don’t think the Kosovo Albanians are listening. As for me, I hope a few of the beautiful frescoes and icons are preserved because they are, indeed, great works of art. So far some fifty churches and monasteries have been destroyed or badly damaged without Malcolm raising a squawk, so I guess everything is as it should be.
In the long run, Serbia’s loss of Kosovo was inevitable, not because Serbs don’t have any historical rights there, but because Albanians outnumbered them ten to one. A more rational and humane policy could have ensured the preservation of the cultural heritage and some kind of protection for the minority. Too late. What has always been terrifying about Milosevic is his obvious enjoyment in setting neighbour against neighbour and watching the resulting hatred boil over into a homicidal orgy. What we have now is all the unhappy people, Serbs and Albanians, in what Harding describes as a ‘rebalkanised Balkans’, who did not deserve to have their lives so completely ruined or their relatives buried in a mass grave.
Charles Simic
Strafford, New Hampshire
From Vol. 21 No. 19
Cover date: 30 September 1999
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n19/letters.html
That pretty much sums up my thoughts on it.
These people are viewed to be intellectuals by the common man on the street. Sadly, it just helps buttress the views of the left when they voice support for them.
That's why I sometimes point out their accomplishments to show that aren't illiterate savages as many liked for the Americans to believe - all the easier to bomb and sanction them.
Yeah, but his birth city and his ethnic kin in the Balkans were the favorite people for the left to hate - and still are.
hey!
yo’ be preachin’ to the choir.
i don’t think bill n’ hill shoulda bombed yugoslavia.
after seeing numerous references that the book by robert kaplan “balkan ghosts” was read
by the clintons before they decided to make war,
i read it.
it’s a mediocre book.
the slavs will hate the u.s. for decades to come.
Funny. And what guy didn’t? LOL
my first comment assumes a dislike for hyphenated americans,
as teddy roosevelt complained a century ago.
It has been almost 50 years and I surprise myself how, in those times, in remembrance, how I hated those people.
Not bad until the last sentence, for there were no mass graves. I guess that little fact is somewhat inconvenient.
Thank you for the post. I appreciate it.
I should look for more of his writings.
Thank you for your post..Simic places himself in a decent, realaistic light..not dreamlike in this piece as with his poetry..this piece indicates he would not allow alluded to manipulation..although leftists might try.
It is hard to stomach the rantings of the left, and even more-so when your own team joins in the glorification of their fellow travelers. When our team heralds them, I cringe and realize probably one in a million could understand why.
Thanks for the comments.
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