Author of dozens of books, Simic was ranked by many as among the greatest and most original poets of his time, one who didn\u2019t write in English until well into his 20s. His bleak, but comic perspective was shaped in part by his years growing up in wartime Yugoslavia, leading him to observe that \u201cThe world is old, it was always old.\u201d His poems were usually short and pointed, with surprising and sometimes jarring shifts in mood and imagery, as if to mirror the cruelty and randomness he had learned early on.
\nHis notable books included The World Doesn\u2019t End, winner of the Pulitzer in 1990; Walking the Black Cat, a National Book Award finalist in 1996; Unending Blues and such recent collections as The Lunatic and Scribbled in the Dark. 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.
\nIn 1964, Simic married the 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
His first book, What the Grass Says, came out in 1967. He followed with Somewhere Among Us a Stone is Taking Notes and Dismantling the Silence, 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
<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Simic (Photo via ) \u201cHistory is a cookbook. The tyrants are chefs. The philosophers write menus. The priests are waiters. The military men are bouncers. The singing you hear is the poets washing dishes in the kitchen.\u201d \u2014 Charles Simic Charles Simic Pulitzer Prize winning poet dies at 84 There Is Nothing Quieter By … <\/p>\n
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