Charles Simic, chess player and Poet Laureate
Dušan Simić was born in 1938 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and grew up in war-torn
Europe. When he was sixteen his family emigrated to the United States, where
he changed is first name to Charles and dropped the diacritical mark in his
surname. He studied in Chicago and became a professor of American literature
and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire.
Charles Simic made a name for himself in the 1970s as a literary minimalist,
writing terse, imagistic poems which, like those of William Blake, have their
roots in observed objects that serve to extrapolate the universe. Over the years,
his style has become immediately recognizable. Critics have often referred to
Simic's poems as "tightly constructed Chinese puzzle boxes." Simic himself
has stated: "Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat
and the poet is only the bemused spectator." The quote intimates Simic's
philosophy that true art must be greater than the person who created it [see
article in Wikipedia].
He writes thoughtfully on such diverse topics as jazz, art, philosophy –
and chess.
This August Charles Simic was selected to be the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant
in Poetry to the Library of Congress. One of the reasons cited was "the
rather stunning and original quality of his poetry". The achievement was
surprising, especially to Simic, who didn't speak English until he was 15 years
old.
Like so many other young Yugoslavs Dušan played chess as a child. The
poem he recited on ABC News on the George Stephanopoulos show was Prodigy.
It is about the lad who learnt the game from a retired professor of astronomy,
who grew up bent over a chessboard, using chipped pieces and missing a white
king. It is a poem about growing up in Belgrade during the Second World War.