America’s new poet laureate racks up the awards...

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Charles Simic, whose darkly humorous and surreal poetry has captivated a generation of readers and won him numerous awards, will become the nation’s 15th poet laureate, the Library of Congress announced today.
‘ I’m overwhelmed,’ the 69-year-old Simic told the Boston Globe, adding that he hasn’t decided how he will put his mark on the job of promoting poetry across the nation.

‘I am especially touched and honored to be selected because I am an immigrant boy who didn’t speak English until I was 15,’ he said in the statement from the Library of Congress.

If that isn’t honor enough, Simic just won the 14th annual Wallace Stevens Award for ‘mastery in the art of poetry’ by the Academy of American Poets. It comes with a $100,000 prize.

Why Simic, why now? Because he’s ‘a poet of immense, humane consideration,’ academy chancellor James Tate told the literary blog GalleyCat. ‘He carries our souls around in his back pocket like a map of the lost world.’

The Yugoslavian-born poet — an essayist, translator and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire — has written 22 books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1989 collection of prose poems, ‘The World Doesn’t End.’

Simic, who lives with his wife in Stratfford, N.H., follows in the footsteps of such distinguished poets as Robert Penn Warren, Joseph Brodsky, Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins and Louise Glück. He succeeds another New Hampshire poet, Donald Hall.

‘The range of Charles Simic’s imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery,’ said James H. Billington, librarian of Congress. ‘He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor.’

Simic, who was 16 when he came to the United States in 1954, told the Boston Globe that he started writing poetry at his suburban Chicago high school (Ernest Hemingway’s alma mater, it turns out) to attract girls. ‘They were always surprised. ‘You wrote this for me?’ ‘ he said.

Of his most recent book, ‘My Noiseless Entourage’ (2005), poet Carol Muske-Dukes wrote in the Los Angeles Times: ‘It takes just one glimpse of Charles Simic’s work to establish that he is a master, ruler of his own eccentric kingdom of jittery syntax and signature insight.’

Simic, who won a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grant in 1984, will publish a new volume of poetry, ‘That Little Something,’ next February. He assumes his duties this fall with a reading of his work during the Library of Congress’ annual literary series on Oct. 17. He also will be a featured speaker at the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival Sept. 29 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. poet laureate title was first given in 1986 to Robert Penn Warren. Poets generally serve one- or two-year terms. Laureates receive a $35,000 award plus a $5,000 travel allowance. Warren has the distinction of being the only poet to serve twice as the Library of Congress’ official poetry emissary, having been chosen its ‘Consultant in Poetry’ in 1944. The honorary position, renamed by an act of Congress in 1985, was endowed in 1937 by railroad scion and scholar Archer M. Huntington.

Kristina Lindgren

Photo Credit: Library of Congress