Charles Simic was named our new Poet Laureate today, and I cheer. I haven’t been able to stand any of the previous ones in my lifetime, despite their dutiful nods to performance poetry. They’re hacks, in the main. Simic is the real deal. Here’s a snip of the NYT story:
Mr. Simic, speaking by telephone from his home in Strafford, N.H.,
described himself as a “city poet” because he has “lived in cities all
of my life, except for the last 35 years.” Before settling into
academia, he held a number of jobs in New York, including bookkeeping,
bookselling and shirt sales. He originally wanted to be a painter, he
said, until “I realized that I had no talent.”He started writing poems while in high school in Chicago, in part, he said, to impress girls. He published his first poems in The Chicago Review when he was 21.
That’s my kind of poet.