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They need a lamb<\/p>\n
I introduce myself as the lamb<\/p>\n
But Simic also loved wordplay (\u201cThe insomniac\u2019s brain is a choo-choo train\u201d), catcalls (\u201cAmerica, I shouted at the radio\/Even at 2 a.m. you are a loony bin!\u201d) and the interplay of great thoughts and everyday follies: \u201cWhat was that fragment of Heraclitus\/You were trying to remember\/As you stepped on the butcher\u2019s cat?\u201d he wrote in \u201cThe Friends of Heraclitus.\u201d In \u201cTransport,\u201d sex becomes a near-literal feast of the senses:<\/p>\n
In the frying pan<\/p>\n
On the stove<\/p>\n
I found my love<\/p>\n
And me naked<\/p>\n
Chopped onions<\/p>\n
Fell on our heads<\/p>\n
And made us cry<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like a parade,<\/p>\n
I told her, confetti<\/p>\n
When some guy<\/p>\n
Reaches the moon<\/p>\n
His notable books included \u201cThe World Doesn\u2019t End,\u201d winner of the Pulitzer in 1990; \u201cWalking the Black Cat,\u201d a National Book Award finalist in 1996; \u201cUnending Blues\u201d and such recent collections as \u201cThe Lunatic\u201d and \u201cScribbled in the Dark.\u201d In 2005, he received the Griffin Poetry Prize and was praised by judges as \u201ca magician, a conjuror,\u201d master of \u201ca disarming, deadpan precision, which should never be mistaken for simplicity.\u201d He was fluent in several languages and translated the works of other poets from French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian.<\/p>\n
His 2022 collection \u201cNo Land in Sight\u201d presented a dark vision of contemporary life, such as the poem \u201cCome Spring\u201d and its warning: \u201cDon\u2019t let that birdie in the tree\/Fool you with its pretty song\/The wicked are back from hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1964, Simic married fashion designer Helene Dubin, with whom he had two children. He became an American citizen in 1971 and two years later joined the faculty of the University of New Hampshire, where he remained for decades.<\/p>\n
Born Dusan Simic in Belgrade in 1938, the year before World War II began, he would describe his youth as \u201ca small, nonspeaking part\/In a bloody epic.\u201d His father fled to Italy in 1942 and was apart from the family for years. Home was so oppressive that Simic came to see the war as a needed escape.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe war ended the day before May 9, 1945, which happened to be my birthday,\u201d he told the Paris Review in 2005. \u201cI was playing in the street. I went up to the apartment to get a drink of water where my mother and our neighbors were listening to the radio. They said, \u2018War is over,\u2019 and apparently I looked at them puzzled and said, \u2018Now there won\u2019t be any more fun!\u2019 In wartime, there\u2019s no parental supervision; the grown-ups are so busy with their lives, the kids can run free.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simic would refer to Hitler and Stalin as his \u201ctravel agents.\u201d Nazi rule gave way to Soviet-backed oppression and Simic emigrated to France with his mother and brother in the mid-1950s, then soon to the U.S. His family settled in Chicago, where his high school was once attended by Ernest Hemingway, and he became interested in poetry \u2014 for the art and for the girls. His parents unable to pay for college, he spent a decade working at jobs ranging from a payroll clerk to house painter while taking night classes at the University of Chicago and eventually New York University, from which he graduated in 1966 with a degree in Russian studies.<\/p>\n
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His first book, \u201cWhat the Grass Says,\u201d came out in 1967. He followed with \u201cSomewhere Among Us a Stone is Taking Notes\u201d and \u201cDismantling the Silence,\u201d and was soon averaging a book a year. A New York Times review from 1978 would note his gift for conveying \u201ca complex of perceptions and feelings\u201d in just a few lines.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf all the things ever said about poetry, the axiom that less is more has made the biggest and the most lasting impression on me,\u201d Simic told Granta in 2013. \u201cI have written many short poems in my life, except \u2018written\u2019 is not the right word to describe how they came into existence. Since it\u2019s not possible to sit down and write an eight-line poem that\u2019ll be vast for its size, these poems are assembled over a long period of time from words and images floating in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0Charles Simic, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who awed critics and readers with his singular art of lyricism and economy, tragic insight and disruptive humor, has died at age 84. The death of Simic, the country\u2019s poet laureate from 2007-2008, was confirmed Monday by executive editor Dan Halpern at Alfred A. Knopf. He did not immediately […]<\/p>\n