Charles Simic
Charles Simic
Charles Simicis a Serbian-American poet and was co-poetry editor of the Paris Review. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for The World Doesn't End, and was a finalist of the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for Selected Poems, 1963-1983 and in 1987 for Unending Blues. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 May 1938
CityBelgrade, Serbia
CountryUnited States of America
There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile To be healed. There's a woden block where bones are broken, Scraped clean--a river dried to its bed
Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.
Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects, such as Duchamp's "Fountain"-urinal as sculpture) abolish the separation between art and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen.
The highest levels of consciousness are wordless.
Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.
The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then-poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.
The world is beautiful but not sayable. That's why we need art.
Silence is the only language god speaks.
If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.
One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.
Making art in America is about saving one's soul.
The secret wish of poetry is to stop time.
He who cannot howl will not find his pack.
I slept little, read a lot, and fell in love frequently.