Examining a Self-Titled Poem by Charles Simic

This short essay focuses on a Charles Simic's poem in his collection That Little Something. The poem is describing a search for something that can never be found.  "That Little Something" itself is short as well, adding to the depth of Simic's work.  Simic uses a modern technique of saying something very short to make a huge statement.  This is the first of four essays concerning That Little Something.

                Charles Simic’s childhood was the product of a war-torn Europe during World War II.  The harsh times that he experienced helped form his depiction of the world and the inherent cruelty that living in this world brings.  “Simic uses his own experiences to compose poems about the physical and spiritual poverty of modern life” (Poetry Foundation).  The pain that Simic has experienced is reflected in his disappointed tone in this poem.  The self-titled poem in his 2008 book That Little Something is about something important that is being looked for but will never be found.

                The poem does not follow any patterns concerning rhyme, but there are four stanzas of four lines each . There is a sense of free verse in this poem, as there is in many modern poems and many of Simic’s other poems.  Assonance does seem to play a role in emphasizing the sound of how the poem is read, however.   In the last stanza, “off” and “on” are emphasized as inclinations of anxiety or nervousness as if the character was fidgeting.  The third stanza uses assonance to create a smooth string of words to contrast the harshness of the previous stanza.  “Afternoon,” “good,” and “cool,” are all used here to add cohesiveness to the lines.  Right after that, the speaker asks a question to disrupt the floating description of a summer afternoon.  The meter is not confined to any specific guidelines either.  This stresses the importance of the message in the last stanza, by showing that the content is the main concern of the writer.  The stanzas seem to rise and fall like a story was being told or an argument was being made.  Simic uses the modern technique of doing away with flamboyancy to create a “realness” factor.  Simic disregards traditional limitations to show that true emotion cannot be confined by structure. There is also some semblance of sentence structure.   There are a few long sentences that set the scene, but the second stanza takes on the appearance of a list of thoughts and eventually ends in an ellipsis.  There is a powerful effect created by Simic’s use of two questions in That Little Something.  They are both rhetorical and have implied answers.  This sticks out when reading this poem, which tries to avoid emotion in a way that objectifies the observation of emotion.  Simic wants the reader to know that there is only one right answer to each question.  The first question acts as the turning point, and the second question concludes the poem by completing the whole picture. 

                Although Simic does use poetic devices to deliver a meaningful thought, he heavily relies on the content of the work to speak for itself.  He is careful to avoid wordiness, and he makes his point by painting a picture.  The situation in “That Little Something” starts as a man helping a female partner to find a lost pearl in a street.  He defines the situation as trivial in the man’s eyes, but then shows the end result as the extreme value in the memory of that situation, as the man misses interacting with the woman.  The metaphor is developed throughout the poem to accurately describe the sense of longing more than the any type of structure does.  Simic’s technique is presenting the bare bones of the poem and letting his imagery create the emotion. 

                The poem is about realizing importance in relationships and the pain from under appreciating them.  It reads as if it is split into two different sections.  The title is the object of interest.  The “little something” takes on two very different roles in the poem.  The object, a pearl, is first portrayed as something that caused annoyance.  The pearl was very unimportant to the speaker.  The line “thinking, not in a million years…” describes an irritated partner in a relationship.  The man is telling himself that he has better things to do with his time than look for something so small that will never be found.  

 In the third stanza, however, the scene is changed to a reflective view, treating the situation as a distant memory.  The last line in the third stanza “In the meantime, what ever became of her?” reveals that the woman in the speaker’s life is no longer present.  Simic creates an importance in the memory of the woman now.  He does not give us much information concerning her.    Then he describes a pain buried in that memory.  All the reader knows is that the woman represents a dark spot in the man’s history.  It is regret that makes the male think about the woman, her pearl, and the emotion that happened that day.  The emphasis on that “little something” is now of it being important instead of inconvenient.  Simic ends with an ironic question that leads to the realization that the memory should have happened differently. 

Charles Simic’s voice in “That Little Something” is vague, but a very strong emotion is portrayed just by a few short stanzas.  He uses a significant memory in a male figure’s mind to describe the pain of a relationship mistreated.  The darkness that comes from overlooking details that matter in life is portrayed in the man regretting how he had acted in the past.  The moment that was shared should have been valued.  Simic describes the pain that comes from not appreciating relationships that are important to us.