Un May 9th 1938 was born Charles simic, American poet born in Belgrade who treats in his poems of contemporary life. It was Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and is still recognized as one of the great voices of the international poetic scene. I make a selection of some of his poems.
Who is Charles Simic
Born in Belgrade in 1938. In 1943 his father emigrated to the United States (He was an engineer and his profession had made him get many contacts). The rest of the family, Charles, his mother and a younger brother, were unable to meet him but also 1954. There they settled in Chicago. Charles finished high school, but did not go to universityInstead, he started working and writing poetry. After doing military service in 1961 he was sent to Germany and France as military police.
En 1968 published his first book, What the grass says. He taught literature at the University of California and then at the University of New Hampshire where he continues to work today. Has published more than sixty books, among them one in prose, The life of images. The last one is Scrawled in the dark, published in 2018.
It's considered one of the greatest contemporary English-language poets and essayists, but he is also highly admired on the international poetic scene. He won 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and he is also a Poet Laureate of the United States.
More works
- Dismantling the silence
- Insomnia hotel
- The world does not end and other poems
- Where is the cat?
- A fly in the ointment, which collects his memories.
- The voice at three in the morning
poems
Our gang
Like moths
hanging around a lamppost
in hell
we were.
Lost souls,
all and each one.
if you find them,
return them to sender.
**
Black butterfly
Ghost ship of my life
overloaded with coffins,
setting sail
with the evening tide.
**
In this our jail
Where the warden is so discreet
that nobody ever sees it
make your round,
you have to be very brave
to tap on a cell wall
when the lights are out
waiting to be heard,
if not for the archangels of heaven,
yes for the damned of hell.
**
Phone without line
Something or someone that I can't name
made me sit down and accept this game
I keep playing years later
without knowing their rules or knowing for sure
who is winning or losing,
as much as I racked my brains studying
the shadow that I project on the wall
like a man who waits all night
a call from a phone without a line
telling himself that maybe it sounds.
The silence around me so dense
that I hear a noise of shuffled cards,
but when I look at my back, restless,
there is only a moth in the window,
his insomniac and unhinged mind like mine.
From Selected Poems
Watermelons
Green Buddhas
At the fruit stand.
We eat a smile
And we spit our teeth.
**
Note slipped under a door
I saw a tall blinded window
By the late afternoon sunlight.
I saw a towel
With many dark fingerprints
Hanging in the kitchen.
I saw an old apple tree
A wind shawl on her shoulders,
Advancing lonely very little by little
Way of the arid hills.
I saw an unmade bed
And I felt the cold of her sheets.
I saw a fly soaked in the dark
Of the coming night
Looking at me because I couldn't get out.
I saw stones that had come
From a great purple distance
Crowding around the front door.
**
Fear
Fear passes from man to man
Not knowing,
As a leaf passes its trembling
To another.
Suddenly the whole tree is shaking
And there is no sign of the wind.
**
The chair
This chair was once a pupil of Euclid.
The book of his laws rests on his seat.
The school windows were open
So the wind turned the pages
Whispering the glorious trials.
The sun set over the golden roofs.
Everywhere the shadows lengthened
But Euclid said nothing of the kind.