Born in war-torn Eastern Europe in 1938, and immigrating from Belgrade as a boy, Pulitzer Prize-winner and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Charles Simic has authored more than sixty books. His work makes a dextrous weave of shadowy subjects and brilliant awakening details. As noted in the Harvard Review, “There are few poets writing in America today who share his lavish appetite for the bizarre, his inexhaustible repertoire of indelible characters and gestures. . . ” – from baby pictures of famous dictators to Jesus panhandling in a weed-infested Eden.

Designating Jackstraws a Notable Book of the Year in 1999, The New York Times noted that “few contemporary poets have been as influential—or as inimitable.” According to the Boston Globe, Simic’s poems “create unforgettable pictures that urge troubling but necessary knowledge.” Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems in 1990, Simic is also a three-time nominee for a National Book Award, for Charon's Cosmology (1977), Walking the Black Cat (1996), and The Voice at 3:00 A.M (2003). His most recent collection, My Noiseless Entourage, was published in 2005.

Among Simic’s many other awards and honors, he was elected in 1995 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the United States. As a distinguished translator from Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and other languages, he has also twice won the PEN International Translation Award. Simic lives and teaches in New Hampshire.

Poetry Center Reading:

Fall 2006