Academic literature on the topic 'Simic, Charles, 1938- Criticism and interpretation'

A Serbian-born American poet, Charles Simic (1938), has been a staple of both American and Serbian poetic scenes for decades, though for different reasons. The paper examines the reception of Simic’s work in Serbian criticism, offering commentary on the translation of his poetry and its critical interpretation. Though Simic is undoubtedly part of American literary canon, and his work is informed by Modernist and Postmodernist American authors such as Williams, Stevens, or Ashbery, Serbian criticism has until very recently focused only on his origin and on the influence of his birth country on his work. By giving an overview of Simic’s major thematic and tonal elements placed within an American context, supported by numerous examples from his poems, we position him firmly within the American poetic tradition, while at the same time pointing out some elements of Serbian poetry relevant for his poetic development, like the influence of Popa, Tadić and Ristović. Shining a historical light on the reception of Simic’s poetry in Serbia, we uncover both the political and poetic reasons for the confusing inclusion of this American poet within Serbian culture.

Part i of the thesis, The Many Selves of Simic: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Poetry of Charles Simic, examines various “selves” out of which Charles Simic’s poetry grows: Simic the American poet, Simic the visual artist, Simic the agnostic theologian, and Simic the humorist. By drawing on scholarship from a variety of disciplines, the thesis accounts for numerous contexts and tensions within which Simic’s poetry has developed. Chapter One explores what it means to refer to Simic as an American poet. In the process, it analyzes the meaningfulness of the construct “American poetry” and identifies several of its key features alongside Simic’s own understanding of this tradition. Finally, it delineates the way Simic has grafted himself into the tradition of American poetry. Chapter Two analyzes the centrality of visual art to the way Simic construes the figurative space created by a poem. It connects Simic’s poetry to the work of the American collage and shadow box artist Joseph Cornell and argues that Simic approaches poems as distinctly physical entities that possess spatial extension. Lastly, it compares Simic’s spatial poetics to those of the American poet Charles Olson. Chapter Three analyzes Simic’s fascination with Christian mysticism alongside his perpetual agnosticism. It argues that Simic’s poetic via negativa incorporates aspects of both medieval and deconstructionist postmodern forms of negation. It then compares Simic’s mysticism with that of Charles Wright and Mark Strand. Chapter Four argues that Simic’s “desire for irreverence” provides the center of gravity that holds together his various “selves.” The chapter delineates the various emotional registers of Simic’s work and analyzes them alongside theories of humor. Finally, it considers the various comedic influences on the formal strategies of Simic’s work. Part ii of the thesis, Tannic Acid Sweetheart, consists of my own poems.