Charles Simic

I mean, I doubt that anyone needs me to introduce them to Charles Simic. But here is one of his poems that has made me incredibly glad. This poem is from The Book of Gods and Devils, published in 1990. Charles Simic is from Yugoslavia, and is therefore lovely to listen to. He was poet laureate in 2007.


A Letter

Dear philosophers, I get sad when I think.
Is it the same with you?
Just as I'm about to sink my teeth into the noumenon,
Some old girlfriend comes to distract me.
"She's not even alive!" I yell to the skies.

The wintry light made me go that way.
I saw beds covered with identical gray blankets.
I saw grim-looking men holding a naked woman
While they hosed her with cold water.
Was that to calm her nerves, or was it punishment?

I went to visit my friend Bob, who said to me:
"We reach the real by overcoming the seduction of images."
I was overjoyed, until I realized
Such abstinence will never be possible for me.
I caught myself looking out the window.

Bob's father was taking their dog for a walk.
He moved with pain; the dog waited for him.
There was no one else in the park,
Only bare trees with an infinity of tragic shapes
To make thinking difficult.



I am including an interview with Charles Simic that is very strange. He reads his poem "That little something" but then he pins down the poem to one particular event in his life. Which I am not used to hearing from poets. Also, please watch the bitch in the red jacket. How she nods at what she feels is the conclusion so that we all know that she is taking away some great meaning from the poem. Desperate.



Simic: "Try and read everything, you read and read and one day you say 'I'm sick and tired of all this...you feel a sense of mission 'I have to do something about the world.'"

Woman: "heh, you have to write poems, heehee."

Simic: "Yeah, you have to write poems."