Printable Version of Topic

Click here to view this topic in its original format

Mosaic Musings...interactive poetry reviews _ Discussions -> Alexandria's Library _ Charles Simic named US poet laureate

Posted by: rus bowden Aug 2 07, 07:11

.

News Google http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22Charles+Simic%22&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d

Web Google http://www.google.com/search?tab=nw&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&ned=us&q=%22Charles%20Simic%22

.

Posted by: RonPrice Dec 11 07, 00:31

Thinking about Simic, I post this item here...Ron Price, Tasmania

AFTER A WHILE

In January 2001 American poet Charles Simic was interviewed. Today I read that interview on the Internet. In that interview Charles said that "after a while" he found writing poetry became an obsession, a passion. This frequent and intense poetic experience was fuelled, he felt, by his isolation and the isolation of poets in general from society, by the lack of understanding of the poet in society. He felt drawn to writing, to poetry, to this form of work. He could not help himself. For the last ten years, 1992-2002, I have found this same passion, this obsession, to be part of my life as well. The "after a while" for me was the twelve year period: 1980-1992.-Ron Price, "Interview with Charles Simic:1/10/01," Internet, 3/01/02.

Part of the essence of what

I'm all about is poetry and I

like to think that it's good stuff--

my poetry--if it sounds good

when it's read. It comes from

a time(or so I like to think) when

the world was being transformed

yet again and when I grew from

a child into what I often feel to be

an old man even now not yet sixty.(1)

It was an immensely fertile seed time(2)

and I trust when you read this you will

get a strong sense of whom the poem

belongs to, a strong sense of the tree

of my life being clothed with the blossoms

and fruits of that consecrated joy, while I

sit in passive wonder at who I was when

I said what I said that day and when I

slipped and fell onto those words on the page.

1 1953-2003

2 Robert Pinsky, "Interview, October 1st, 1997." My seedtime has been that half century 1953-2003.