Charles Simic

Charles Simic was widely recognized as one of the most visceral and unique poets of his generation. His work won numerous awards, among them the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” a Griffin International Poetry Prize, a Wallace Stevens Award, and an appointment as US poet laureate. He taught English and creative writing for over 30 years at the University of New Hampshire. He emigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia as a teenager, Simic drew upon his own experiences of war-torn Belgrade to compose poems about the physical and spiritual poverty of modern life. 

Simic was the author of dozens of poetry collections. Notable titles include his book of prose poems, The World Doesn’t End (Harcourt, 1989), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990, Walking the Black Cat (Mariner, 1996), a finalist for the National Book Award, Jackstraws (Ecco, 1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and Selected Poems 1963–2003 (Faber & Faber, 2004)whichwon the prestigious Griffin International Poetry Award. Other collections include Selected Poems 1963–1983 (George Braziller, 1990), Hotel Insomnia (Ecco, 1992), Night Picnic: Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001), My Noiseless Entourage (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005), and his final collection No Land in Sight: Poems (Knopf, 2022).

Simic was prolific not only as a poet but also as a translator, editor, and essayist. He translated the work of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Slovenian poets, including Tomaž Šalamun and Vasko Popa. He translated and edited the 1992 Graywolf Press anthology The Horse Has Six Legs: An Anthology of Serbian Poetry, which was reissued in 2010. The book is regarded as the premier introduction to Serbian contemporary poetry. In addition to poetry and prose poems, Simic also wrote several works of prose nonfiction, including 1992’s Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell published by Ecco. Among Simic’s essay collections are two published by University of Michigan Press, Orphan Factory (1997) and the memoir A Fly in the Soup (2003), which collected previously published autobiographical essays and fragments.

Simic spent his formative years in Belgrade. His early childhood coincided with World War II and his family was forced to evacuate their home several times to escape indiscriminate bombing; as he put it, “My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin.” The atmosphere of violence and desperation continued after the war. Simic’s father left the country for work in Italy, and his mother tried several times to follow, only to be turned back by authorities. When Simic was 15, his mother finally arranged for the family to move to Paris. After a year, the family reunited with his father in Chicago, where Simic attended high school in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, and began to take a serious interest in poetry.

Simic’s first poems were published in 1959, when he was 21. His first full-length collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published by the small San Francisco publisher Kayak the following year. Simic began college at the University of Chicago, but was drafted into the armed service in 1961. He served until 1963. Simic finally earned his bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1966. In a very short time, Simic’s work, including original poetry in English and translations of important Yugoslavian poets, began to attract critical attention.

Some of Simic’s best-known works challenge the dividing line between the ordinary and extraordinary. He animates and gives substance to inanimate objects, discerning the strangeness in household items as ordinary as a knife or a spoon. Childhood experiences of war, poverty, and hunger also lie behind a number of poems. But Simic was known for tempering the horror and trauma of his poems with gallows humor and an ironic self-awareness.

Simic died January 9, 2023.