Charles Simic: A Brief Biography in Context

Charles Simic has accomplished much as a poet in his years of writing.  He has won many awards and prizes, and he continues to do so.  This essay puts his work That Little Something in the context of his career.

Charles Simic and That Little Something: A Brief Biography in Context

            Charles Simic, named Poet Laureate in 2007, was born in Belgrade Yugoslavia on May ninth, 1938.  World War II haunted his childhood, and in 1954 he moved with his mother and brother to the United States where his father awaited their arrival.  He lived in and around Chicago and took a major interest in poetry during high school.  He admits that one reason he began exploring poetry was to meet girls (poetryfoundation.org).  His first poetry publication was in 1959, when he was twenty-one.  Simic could not speak English until he was fifteen.  He attended the University of Chicago, but later took a hiatus because he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961.  He eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1966.  The following year he published his first full length collection of poems, What the Grass Says (1967).  Critical response soon followed this publication as in The American Moment: American Poetry in the Mid-Century, Geoffrey Thurley described Simic’s earliest works as European and rural, not American and urban.

            Although, Simic’s work defies easy categorization (poetryfoundation.org).  Vernon Young, writer for the Hudson Review, shared this feeling when he wrote: “Simic, graduate from NYU, married and a father in pragmatic America, turns, when he composes poems, to his unconscious and to earlier pools of memory” (poetry foundation.org).  Simic started making a name for himself in the mid seventies with his publication of Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (1974).  His talent in surrealism really culminated in this work.  He lets obscurity tell a story in each poem: “Green Buddhas / on the fruit stand / we eat the smile / and spit out the teeth” (Simic 1974).  He also became very appreciated for his skillful balance of humor and sorrow. 

            One extremely strong aspect of Simic’s poetry is the fact that it has changed very little throughout his extensive career (poetryfoundation.org). Ian Sampson said in a review he wrote in Guardian, “Simic’s work reads like one big poem or project” (poetryfoundation.org).  The repetition of theme in Simic’s work is scrutinized as well, but critics like Sampson argue that this repetition is directly linked with the meaning of his work and the story he tells. 

            Simic has accrued many recognitions, awards, and prizes throughout his career.  He has won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and at the same time the Wallace Stevens Award and the appointment of U.S. Poet Laureate (poetryfoundation.org).  In addition to poetry, Simic is recognized as a prolific translator, essayist, and editor.  He has translated the work of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian poets (poetry foundation.org).  He taught English at the University of New Hampshire for more than thirty years as well.  In total, Simic has completed twenty-nine collections of poetry from 1967 to 2008 (“Charles Simic”).

            His most recent poetry collection publication is his work That Little Something which was published in 2008.  This book, like his others, describes the relationship between everyday life and life’s extremes.  “Everything about you / My life, is both / Make-believe and real” (Simic 2008).  Even though he is now seventy-two years old, Simic shows little sign of resigning from writing extraordinary poetry.