Charles Simic (1938–2023)

Charles Simic has passed away. The trinity of my biggest influences as a young poet including Tony Hoagland and Philip Levine are now all gone. 

I was first hooked on Simic after getting a subscription to The New Yorker as a Christmas present when I was a junior in college. I read Simic's  "On the Pleasures of Reading" when it was first published in June of 1993. I read it while my father drove me to his workplace where I was employed between semesters at Framingham State College. I never forgot the poem's simplicity and afterwards would try to copy that style for nearly two decades.

While I would have preferred to write about Simic's poetry for my final thesis in Alan Feldman's 20th Century Literature class during my senior year, I was stupidly ambitious and chose to compare Robert Lowell's Life Studies and W.D. Snodgrass' Heart's Needle. Any memory of the paper faded almost immediately after I turned it in, somehow passing. The best thing I took from the class was committing this Simic poem to memory. I still recite it to myself now and again.

Charles Simic was the first "big deal" poet I ever saw read their work in person. It was a night at Borders Bookstore in Boston's Downtown Crossing area. I purchased ahead of time hardcover versions of A Wedding in Hell (which included "On the Pleasures of Reading") and Walking the Black Cat. I stumbled through my words of appreciation while he graciously signed both books, but the best moment of the night came from a woman ahead of me in line.

"How do you make it look so easy?"

Simic playfully scoffed at her question. "It ain't easy. It's a bitch!" 

I recite that line to myself now and again as well, though in a much lower voice.