Inspiration Cannot Be Taught |
Charles Simić, one of the foremost contemporary American poets and winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recently visited Belgrade as a guest of the Serbian PEN Center, the Belgrade Cultural Centre and the US embassy.
By Mila Milosavljević
Photo by Milan Melka |
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The reason for the visit of Charles Simic, after a twenty-fiveyear absence from his native city, was the publication of his two latest books: a book of essays called Terrifying Heaven and a collection of poems The Devil is also a Poet (both books were translated by Vesna Roganović). Simic's visit was also an introduction to the Belgrade Book Fair, the biggest annual book event in the country.
Mr. Simic left his native Belgrade with his family immediately following World War II. The family Simić first took up residence in Paris, where a young Charles, in secondary school at the time, became completely enamoured of poetry after reading the French classics. The poetry of Arthur Rimbaud made an especially deep impression on him at the time. Then came the move to America. The poet recalls that those first years were very difficult. During the day he worked odd jobs and attended university classes in the evening. A lonely life, and even the language barrier, helped the young immigrant discover the world of books.
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Mr. Simic, how do you remember your first years as an immigrant?
– I read a lot. American libraries were so well stocked and the formalities needed to check out books were so few. I would go to the library sometimes several times a week and get a large number of books. You were allowed to take a book home regardless of whether it was a valuable volume of an encyclopaedia or a book of fiction. I read a lot indeed during those first years in America.
When did you decide to devote yourself to poetry? What was it that brought out the poet in you?
– I was convinced for a time that I would become a painter. I stuck to painting for a long time - until I was around 30-years old. It might sound like a joke, but it's not, that I made the decision to become a poet when I came to realise the best-looking girls were attracted to my peers who wrote them poems. I told myself that I, too, could do that and so I began to write poems. It was very tough, however. I would write and then throw away the poems that I didn't like. Nevertheless, it so happened that an American literary magazine published one of my poems, which encouraged me. Then suddenly my poetic ambition was stopped short by the army. Many days as a soldier lay ahead of me in Europe, and I would use them to read. I read all kinds of books, mostly poetry. I actually matured as a poet while in the army barracks. At one point I realised that what I had written so far was no good and I asked my brother to send me all of my notebooks. When the parcel arrived, I threw all those verses away and began afresh, 'armed' with the poetry greats, from ancient Greeks to my contemporaries. |
| Charles Simic was born in Belgrade on May 9, 1938, as the eldest son of Djordje and Jelena (Matijević) Simić. Just before the end of World War II, his father, an engineer, left the country and owing to his business connections with an American company for which he worked before the war, he was able to go to America. His wife and two sons managed to emigrate to France in 1953. After waiting there for a year, they joined him in the US. The family first lived in New York, then in Chicago, where Charles Simic went to high school in Oak Park, which Earnest Hemingway had attended earlier. Upon graduation, he held a number of temporary jobs, including with the Chicago Sun Times. He returned to New York in 1958, worked during the day as a delivery boy, shirt salesman, bookseller, house painter, teller, so he could study at night. That was when he wrote his first poems and published them in literary magazines. Soon afterwards, after serving in the army in Germany and France, he returned to New York and married fashion designer Helenne in 1964, then graduated from New York University in 1967. Not long after that, the Kayak publishing house issued his first collection of poems (1968). In the meantime, he worked as an assistant editor for a photography magazine and published his second book of verse. From 1970 to 1973, he taught at California State College and became a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire and remained there until his retirement in May of 2004. He lives in Stafford (New Hampshire). | |
You said that you feel like an American. How much has America influenced your creative work, and what would be the portion of Serbian poets in this?
– It is true that I feel like an American because I have been living in America for 53 years. My children are Americans, my friends as well. It is natural then that my poetry, too, is inspired by impressions from there. As regards Serbian poets, the legendary Vasko Popa exerted the greatest impact on my creative work. By the way, Popa is a very well known poet in America. As far as contemporary Serbian poets, I admire the poetry of Novica Tadić, and I like the poems of Radmila Lazić, also known over here.
What kind of an influence does politics have on you as a poet?
– Politics are an inevitability. There are poets who absolutely evolve their creative work around it. I find politics inspiring because it has fully determined the course of my life. My house in Majka Jevrosima St., in downtown Belgrade, was bombed by Hitler's German bombers, then by the Allies. That is one of the reasons why I left Belgrade, because of politics. However, this does not mean that a poet must subscribe to an explicit political stance. |
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Bibliography
Charles Simic has produced more than sixty books of poetry and essays to date. His most important collections include Charon's Cosmology, The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems, which won him the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Walking the Black Cat and A Wedding in Hell. He won two PEN centre awards for translations of Serbian poetry into English and was short-listed for the National Book Award in Poetry. He also received the Academy of American Poets Edgar Allan Poe Award, the American Academy Award and the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize, the most prestigious Canadian literary prize as well as a number of fellowships given to writers in the US. In addition to poetry, Charles Simic has also written a number of books of essays and reviews in the New York Review of Books. He has achieved great success in the field of translation as well. Numerous translations of works of French, English, Serbian, Macedonian and Slovenian poets have won him a number of awards and recognitions.
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You have taught creative writing for many years. Would you describe to us what your lectures are like and whether writing poetry is something that can be mastered at school?
– Inspiration cannot be taught. Neither can talent. If there is not that something to move you, to inspire you, there can be no poetry. My creative writing workshops were attended by students with whom I first had a talk, and I picked those who had a desire to become poets. As far as those who had no talent, I told them so openly. Students openly discussed and criticised the work of their colleagues in my classes. For those who successfully completed my course, I offered no guarantees that they would gain fame as poets. Whether any of them would have a book published and become a recognised poet depended on many things.
You have consciously chosen poetry as you medium although those who read poetry greatly outnumber by those who read prose?
– In a global sense, this is correct. But, on the other hand, those who love poetry are much more loyal as readers. I and my poetry are known in America because my poems can be found in textbooks, and are taught to students in American schools. Thus, despite the relatively small editions of poetry books compared to prose - only some fifteen or so thousand copies - people know of me and about my work. | |
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