A short life of the author
Charles Simic (1938–2023) was born Dušan Simić on 9 May 1938 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He emigrated to the United States in 1954 and studied at the University of Chicago and New York University. He taught at the University of New Hampshire for over thirty years.
Life and Career
Simic’s early poetry — What the Grass Says (1967), Dismantling the Silence (1971) — established his characteristic mode: short, spare poems that combine surrealist imagery with an American vernacular voice. His childhood experience of wartime Belgrade — bombings, occupation, displacement — gave his poetry a darkness that is always present but rarely stated directly.
The World Doesn’t End (1989) — a collection of prose poems — won the Pulitzer Prize. The poems are fables, jokes, nightmares, and philosophical riddles compressed into paragraph-length units. Simic was also a prolific translator of Serbian and other Slavic poets, and an influential essayist and critic.
Major Works and Themes
Simic wrote about memory, violence, ordinary objects, food, insomnia, and the absurdity of existence. His poems are deceptively simple — short lines, plain language — but they operate through juxtaposition, surprise, and a dark wit that is distinctively his own.
Key Works
- The World Doesn’t End (1989) — Pulitzer Prize
- Walking the Black Cat (1996)
Collecting Simic
Early chapbooks (Kayak Press, George Braziller) bring $50–$150. Later collections (Harcourt, Ecco) bring $15–$30. Simic died in 2023.