Charles Simic

Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1938. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1953, and settled in New York in 1954. Simic published his first poems in 1959. Two years later he was drafted and served the U.S. army. He graduated from New York University in 1966. A year later he published his first volume of poetry, ‘What the Grass Says’. Simic has received many grants, including one from the Guggenheim Foundation, and has lectured at various universities. Since 1973 he has taught American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of New Hampshire. He writes essays as well as poems, and translated poetry from French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Slovenian. He also works as an editor, and has written a children’s book, published in German as ‘Wo steckt Pepé?’ (Engl: Where’s Pepé?). Simic won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his volume of prose poems, which was published as ‘The World Doesn’t End’ in 1990.

Despite his European origins, Simic belongs with Mark Strand and James Tate to a generation of American poets who made their names in the 1960’s as surrealists. Since then Simic poems have evoked various settings and images, from New York City to small New England towns. His own biography, his emigration from a land devastated by several wars has had an impact on his poetry. “What is beautiful”, he writes in one poem, “is found accidentally and not sought after. What is beautiful is easily lost.”

Simic is the metaphysician of the ordinary, a poet who reminds us of the mystery of our daily lives. For him the absence of unambiguous events is an essential part of this experience. “Comedy says as much about the world as tragedy”, he writes in one of his essays. “In fact, if you seek true seriousness, you must take room for both comic and tragic vision.” Wit and poetry undergo a symbiosis in his work, for “like poetry, humour is subversive.” The origins of this “carnivalistic” experience of the world can be traced back to Simic’s autobiographical writings, which have also stuck a chord with critics. In ‘A Fly in the Soup’ the author recalls his early childhood in Belgrade. The unique, authentic flavour of the text stems from the juxtaposition of life-threatening wartime occurrences and a child’s love of adventure.

© international literature festival berlin

Austerities
Braziller
New York, 1982
 
Unending Blues: Poems
Harcourt Brace
San Diego, New York, 1986
 
The World Doesn’t End
Harcourt Brace
New York, 1989
 
Nine Poems: a Childhood Story
Exact Change
Cambridge, 1989
 
Das Buch von Göttern und Teufeln
Hanser
München, 1993
[Ü: Hans Magnus Enzensberger]
 
A Wedding in Hell
Harcourt Brace
New York, 1994
 
Walking the Black Cat
Harcourt Brace
New York, 1996
 
Orphan Factory
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor, 1997
 
Die Fliege in der Suppe
Hanser
München, 1997
[Ü: Rudolf von Bitter]
 
Medici Groschengrab. Die Kunst des Joseph Cornell
Hanser
München, 1998
[Ü: Klaus Martens]
 
Grübelei im Rinnstein. Ausgewählte Gedichte
Hanser
München, 2000
[Ü: Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Michael Krüger, Rainer G. Schmidt, Jan Wagner]
 
Wo steckt Pepe?
Hanser
München, 2000
[Ü: Uwe-Michael Gutzschhahn]
 
The Metaphysician in the Dark
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor, 2003
 
My Noiseless Entourage
Harcourt
Orlando, 2005

Übersetzer
Rudolf von Bitter, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Uwe-Michael Gutzschhahn, Susanne Höbel, Michael Krüger, Klaus Martens, Wiebke Oeser, Rainer G. Schmidt, Jan Wagner