Introducer

00:00:05.08

A short quotation which appears in the ‘Contributors' Note’s to Paul Carroll's anthology The Young American Poets.  Quote: “As far back as I can remember there was a kind of dumbness within me, a need that sought expression.  How it eventually materialized in the act of writing a poem belongs to a biography which I have only been able to recount in a few successful poems.  As for the finished product, the poem, my need requires it to be of, as Whitman said, the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, and further, if they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing.  On a subjective level, I write to give being to that vibration which is my life, and to survive in a hard time”.  Charles Simic.

 

Charles Simic

00:00:57.84

Thank you.  Is this mic also for the audience or just for the tape?  Oh it is, okay.  I'll be reading mostly from my third book, including also some more recent poems.  And I'll start off with a very recent poem which is called "Breasts."

 

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00:02:07.37

Reads "Breasts"

 

Charles Simic

00:05:05.78

This is not from the book.  A series of poems really dealing with inanimate objects.  And the first poem in the series is called "Table."

 

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00:05:27.56

Reads "Table"

 

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00:06:55.20

Reads "Stone"

 

Charles Simic

00:08:14.90

There's a poem about a fork, and also a poem about a spoon and knife, and I'll read "The Fork."

 

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00:08:26.88

Reads "The Fork"

 

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00:09:12.37

Reads "My Shoes"

 

Charles Simic

00:10:42.11

The last one of these has not been included in the book.  I only discovered it about a year ago, in a notebook, but it was written around the same time, and I've sort of been fooling around with it.  It's called "Brooms."  There's five parts.  I'll just make a little pause within each part.

 

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00:11:13.03

Reads "Brooms" - Part I

 

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00:11:43.69

Reads "Brooms" - Part II

 

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00:12:41.89

Reads "Brooms" - Part III

 

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00:13:24.19

Reads "Brooms" - Part IV

 

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00:14:06.93

Reads "Brooms" - Part V

 

Charles Simic

00:14:55.23

I'll read you the last poem of, in the book of this particular series, which really has nothing to do with objects, but it's a poem in which I imagine what would happen if someone really penetrated one of these inanimate objects, like his pores, kind of a Christopher Columbus of entering an ashtray or something.  It's called "Explorers."

 

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00:15:33.45

Reads "Explorers"

 

Charles Simic

00:17:13.95

Let's see. This is, this is called "The Inner Man."

 

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00:17:40.13

Reads "The Inner Man"

 

Charles Simic

00:19:06.25

This poem, this next poem is called "The Animals."  I wrote it in New York City, after living in New York City for about five-six years, and lamenting the pastoral quality of my first book, and my inability to return to that kind of nature poetry.  I realized that I hadn't seen a tree or an animal in about three or four years, and yet at the same time writing, you know, occasionally about some cows, or, you know, and I was saying, what are these animals, you know, these shadowy animals.  Anyway, here's the poem.  "The Animals."

 

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00:19:46.24

Reads "The Animals"

 

Charles Simic

00:21:07.07

Let's see.  Sort of change to some different kinds of poems.  Here's a poem about Chicago.  Going back to Chicago.  And, to see my mother.  And...it's all there anyway.  Hopefully.  There's seven parts.

 

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00:22:03.24

Reads "Chicago" - Part I

 

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00:22:43.52

Reads "Chicago" - Part II

 

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00:23:17.34

Reads "Chicago" - Part III

 

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00:23:57.52

Reads "Chicago" - Part IV

 

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00:24:35.68

Reads "Chicago" - Part V

 

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00:25:06.70

Reads "Chicago" - Part VI

 

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00:25:33.53

Reads "Chicago" - Part VII

 

Charles Simic

00:26:39.54

Let's see.  I can't find it.  Maybe it's not written yet.  Oh here it is, yeah.

 

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00:27:01.18

Reads "Tapestry"

 

Charles Simic

00:28:15.96

This is a very different kind of poem.  The material for the the poem is, are, cliches, working with with awful cliches, things which were totally beaten to death and, you know, can't be used anymore.  Or proverbs, popular wisdom, and I'm twisting it all around, trying to reverse the kind of universe that is implied by, by let's say proverbs, if you get up in the morning and such and such a thing happens.  There is something very deterministic about it, and to reverse that, to give it a little fresh air, I'll turn it around.  And so I have a sequence of six poems which are entirely made up of these things, and they're called, the common title is "Concerning my Neighbors, the Hittites," and the...why the Hittites...why not?  [Laughs]  Hittites were simply something that I had not the slightest idea about and I sort of saw ourselves one day becoming the Hittites, you know, somebody sitting one day in some future century and, our century being, sort of the Hittites, you know. And so there are six poems, and, I guess that's about all to be said.

 

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00:29:58.40

Reads "Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites" - Part I

 

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00:31:21.87

Reads "Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites" - Part II

 

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00:32:09.57

Extended pause--about ten seconds--possibly this was originally the section break between Part II and Part III?  In published version (Selected Early Poems, 1999), there is no section break, only a stanza break here.

 

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00:33:20.60

Reads "Concerning My Neighbours, the Hittites" - either Part II continued (as in 1999 published version) or beginning of Part III

 

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00:33:20.74

Beginning of Part III in published version.  In this recording, Simic makes only an extremely brief pause between this section and the last--possibly no section break in poem as recorded here.

 

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00:34:20.75

Reads "Concerning My Neighbours, the Hittites" - Part IV [note--includes extra stanzas not included in the 1999 published version of the poem.]

 

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00:35:12.58

Reads "Concerning My Neighbours, the Hittites" - Part V

 

Charles Simic

00:36:14.53

Reads "Concerning My Neighbours, the Hittites" - Part VI [Note: Simic makes no break or pause between Part V and this final stanza, which constitutes Part VI in the 1999 published version.  Perhaps version as recorded did not contain a section-break here.]

 

Charles Simic

00:36:23.51

Do you we need a break?  Should we take a break?  Huh?  No, yes.  No.  Take a break.  Yeah, let's take a ten-minute break.   [Applause]

 

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00:36:38.17

Recording ends.