Simic, Charles
[key], 1938–2023, American poet, b. Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now in
Serbia), grad. New York Univ. (B.A., 1966). Simic moved to the United States
in 1954, joining his father, who had arrived before World War II. Simic
taught at several colleges, most notably from 1974 at the Univ. of New
Hampshire, where he is now professor emeritus. He has written more than 60
books, including the poetry collections What the Grass Says
(1960), Charon's Cosmology (1977), Unending
Blues (1986), The World Doesn't End (1990;
Pulitzer Prize), Dime-Store Alchemy (1992, repr 2011),
Walking the Black Cat (1996),
Jackstraws (1999), The Voice at 3:00
AM (2003), My Noiseless Entourage (2005),
That Little Something (2008), New and Selected
Poems: 1962–2012 (2013), The Lunatic
(2015), and Scribbled in the Dark (2017). His poetry is
stark and startlingly original, with touches of ironic humor; his language
is plainspoken and accessible, although his imagery is often dark and
sometimes bizarre. He also is celebrated for his translations of Yugoslav
and French poets, and has written many essays and edited several
anthologies. His selected prose was collected in The Life of
Images (2015). A former MacArthur fellow (1984–89),
Simic was U.S. poet laureate in
2007–8.
See his collected memoirs, A Fly in the Soup (2003); M. Hulse, Charles Simic in Conversation with Michael Hulse (2002); B. Weigl, ed., Charles Simic: Essays on the Poetry (1996).
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