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White
- GenresPoetry
27 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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About the author
Charles Simic
257 books471 followersU.S. Poet Laureate, 2007-2008
Dušan Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. Simic’s childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where he graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963.
Simic is the author of more than 30 poetry collections, including The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Jackstraws (1999); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and Scribbled in the Dark (2017). He is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught for over 30 years.
Simic has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His other honors and awards include the Frost Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Prize. He served as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2001. Simic has also been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Dušan Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. Simic’s childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where he graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963.
Simic is the author of more than 30 poetry collections, including The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Jackstraws (1999); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and Scribbled in the Dark (2017). He is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught for over 30 years.
Simic has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His other honors and awards include the Frost Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Prize. He served as the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2001. Simic has also been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 2, 2022
He's just so great.
January 21, 2008
Charles Simic, White (New Rivers Press, 1972)
I have quite quickly become convinced that Charles Simic's books belong on the same short shelf that holds Carruth, Sadoff, Robert Lowell, and a few other American poets. Seems like everything I pick up by the guy is wonderful. This early piece (a collection? A long poem? Can't tell) continues the trend.
It's either a collection of short, untitled pieces (which the acknowledgments section would seem to indicate) or a longer work called "White" with a postscript. Either way, it's classic Simic and well worth the trouble it will take to hunt down. It's more classically surreal than his later works, but with the same tone of understated wit, the same veneration of the odd ins-and-outs of quirky beauty, the same engaging, and distinct, diction.
If you're not yet familiar with the work of Charles Simic, the only reason not to start with this one is that it will take you way too long to find, probably. If you're already an established fan, or stumble across a copy in your local library, by all means give it a read. ****
I have quite quickly become convinced that Charles Simic's books belong on the same short shelf that holds Carruth, Sadoff, Robert Lowell, and a few other American poets. Seems like everything I pick up by the guy is wonderful. This early piece (a collection? A long poem? Can't tell) continues the trend.
It's either a collection of short, untitled pieces (which the acknowledgments section would seem to indicate) or a longer work called "White" with a postscript. Either way, it's classic Simic and well worth the trouble it will take to hunt down. It's more classically surreal than his later works, but with the same tone of understated wit, the same veneration of the odd ins-and-outs of quirky beauty, the same engaging, and distinct, diction.
If you're not yet familiar with the work of Charles Simic, the only reason not to start with this one is that it will take you way too long to find, probably. If you're already an established fan, or stumble across a copy in your local library, by all means give it a read. ****
August 14, 2007
i read this a book it seems eons ago... a long poem by simic, and a strange, atypical one at that -- pulling into it some heavy subject matter that he rarely touches on -- almost theological in nature. chock full of simic's brilliant use of surrealist images.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews