Charles Simic, An Appreciation

I'm feeling a bit reflective and melancholy upon learning about Charles Simic's passing.

I'm not entirely sure when or how I became aware of Charles Simic.  I had read a lot of poetry in my twenties, just on my own and through a creative writing professor (though Ken kind of steered us towards the New York School and alternative poets with some ties to Michigan, such as Jim Harrison, Faye Kicknosway, Andrei Codrescu and John Sinclair).  I'm pretty sure I didn't discover Simic until after I had left Ann Arbor.  It may just be that I was reading poetry extensively at that time, casting a wide net, as I was working on an early incarnation of my transportation anthology.  At that time, the poems were only about subways and elevated trains.  Simic has a few poems along these lines, and that may have been how I stumbled across him.  At any rate, when I did start reading him, I was drawn in quickly (a bit like my feelings about August Kleinzahler, who I discovered even later than Simic).  I went to see Simic reading in New York.  (I'm pretty sure it wasn't Poets House but it was a place like that.)  This was probably 1994, and I think he was reading from A Wedding in Hell, which had just come out.  I had him autograph a copy.  I'm not sure if I got it then or just at a NYC bookstore, but I picked up an already autographed copy of his early Selected Poems.

I like many of his poems.  They are generally pretty short, somewhat sardonic and often have a bit of a surrealistic streak.  I generally can't/don't write poems like this myself, but I can appreciate this in others (though I suppose my poems are usually short).  I don't have all of them by any means, but I have most of his individual collections published between 1994 and 2008.  Since then I have relied a lot more on e-book versions of his collections.  In fact, I just got in line for his latest and presumably final collection, No Land in Sight (2022).  I suppose if I love it, I might get a physical copy, but I probably don't need to do that.*

At any rate, I saw Simic read a second time in Chicago at the Harold Washington Library.  I'm pretty sure I did stand in line to get a copy of The Voice at 3 A.M. signed.  What's a little more baffling is I also have a signed copy of The World Doesn't End.  It's possible I picked that up at one of the two readings, but it is quite rare for me to ask for two things to be signed in an autograph line, so it is a bit more likely I just bought it on-line, maybe paying a bit of a premium.  This may just be one of those unsolved mysteries.  

I see that there are still some autographed copies of his books floating about at less than astronomical prices.  One of the cheaper ones is Hotel Insomnia, which is one of his stronger collections, but I managed to restrain myself and will leave that to others.  I did buy a signed copy of Unending Blues, which I don't own.  That will make 5 signed editions of his books, which is a solid number.

Looking over his oeuvre, it looks like I probably should borrow and read Return to a Glass Lit by Milk, Charon's Cosmology, Austerities, Weather Forecast for Utopia & Vicinity, Pyramids and Sphinxes, Frightening Toys and Looking for Trouble: Selected Early and More Recent Poems.**  Fortunately, it looks like all or nearly all of these can be sourced at Robarts or Archive.org.

* I was able to glance through the e-book edition.  It's a pretty good collection, and I might pick it up if it turns up remaindered, but I generally shouldn't be picking up new books, especially when I can get them out of the library!  Anyway, there are quite a few transportation-related poems here, with train travel, driving, bus trips and walking all represented.  I might even see about adding "Everyone is Running Late" to the list of bus-themed poems, as I generally don't have as many of those as poems about driving or even subway riding.

** I have read the bulk of the poems in these books in various selected editions of Simic's poetry but there is nothing quite like reading the full work.