Aug

8

The New Laureate.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

August 8, 2007 |

This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
-from “Fork” by Charles Simic

Charles Simic has been named the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States. Simic was born in Belgrade on May 9, 1938. With his parents he moved several times (he’s said “Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents”) before coming to the United States in 1954. For Poet Laureate, a post that’s been held by Robert Penn Warren, Rita Dove, Elizabeth Bishop, Maxine Kumin, among others. Simic is a sharp contrast to the most recent Poets Laureate, Billy Collins and Donald Hall, with his strange, surreal poems, including prose poems. In fact, his book of prose poems The World Doesn’t End, won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. It begins, appropriately enough, with the Fats Waller quote, “Let’s waltz the rumba!” He’s written more than twenty books of poetry. His poem Eyes Fastened With Pins, from Charon’s Cosmology, is, like many of his poems, funny and haunting at the same time.

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death’s laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death’s supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can’t figure it out
Among all the locked doors…
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death’s side of the bed.

Simic has also translated the poems of Serbian poet Vasko Popa, and wrote an introduction to The Battle of Kosovo, a translation of the Kosovo poem cycle made by by John Matthias and Vladeta Vuckovic. He’s also written Dime Store Alchemy, a book about the art of Joseph Cornell, whose works have been compared to prose poems.

The position of Poet Laureate of the United States was originally created in 1937 as Poetry Consultant To The Library of Congress and renamed in 1985.

Here’s another Simic poem that, with his surreal humor, seems appropriate for summer.

Against Winter
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there’s no one to ask.
All day long you’ll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you’ll shiver like straw.

A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,
The bare branches reached after them in vain.

Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier
Of a defeated army, you’ll stay at your post,
Head bared to the first snow flake.
Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,
You’re crazier than the weather, Charlie.


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. James on August 8, 2007 9:59 am

    How does one become Poet Laureate?

  2. Christopher Waldrop on August 8, 2007 12:11 pm

    Good question. Do you mind if I save that for another article? Britain really started the tradition of the Poet Laureate (where it’s still a lifetime appointment). And several states in the United States have their own Poet Laureate. Donald Hall, for instance, who was U.S. Poet Laureate, also served as Vermont’s Poet Laureate.

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