I’ve read some of your poems.
You seem to notice birds a lot.
They show up in a lot of your poems
but you don’t say what kind of birds they are.
Are they warblers? Owls?
Robins, or big brooding hawks?
Whooping cranes? You don’t tell us.
And when the birds sit in a tree or shrub
you don’t tell us what kind of tree or shrub. It’s OK.
Not everyone is curious about that kind of thing,
and even if you told us it was a nightingale
and that it was on a Liquidambar branch
most of us wouldn’t know what either of those was.
Besides, it’s a kind of minimalism
you seem to be working toward,
poetry stripped down, everything extra left off.
Really, in that kind of poetry, there’s no need
for detailed context or adverbs, for complex metaphors,
for meaning, for blood.
A coho salmon — sorry, a fish — in a store
looks just as good on its bed of ice
as it would in a native stream somewhere, blood flowing
and besides, gutted, it’s easier to eat.
You’re right. It’s far safer to peer at meaning
like you would a bather in a lake, through the trees
without letting her know you’re there.
You won’t get to meet her that way,
you certainly won’t get lucky
but at least you won’t get entangled
in some kind of non-specific seaweed
if it turns out she invites you to swim with her.
This one guy had your job a few years back
and he wrote something about birds too,
except that they were hypothetical
and only used to make a simile
about poems not having any words in them
which, face it, just doesn’t make sense.
Really, what are your alternatives?
What men care about the names of birds?
Just the limp-wristed, the sandal wearers,
and every once in a while a son-of-a-bitch like Jeffers.
Who wants to be like him?
If he had had the chance to represent his country,
to be its public poet in an age
when forests burn with all their various trees
and millions of vague animals make way
before the chainsaw and the plow and floods,
to represent his country,
one nation under the heel of god
bringing the quaking people of the world
the freedom to come prune generic shrubs
so that birds might sit in them
for your desultory, peripheral notice
he wouldn’t have had the sense to take the job, I bet
but would have said something odd
about complicity, the banal,
and the striped tail feathers of sharp-shinned hawks
whatever those are.
Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.
23 comments on "A paean to Charles Simic to note his getting a new job"Nicely brought to a nonspecific shriek at the end, there, Chris.
Another takedown on Simic’s elevation to poet laureate:
http://margaretsoltan.phenominet.com/2007/08/charles-simic.html
Ouch.
(purely non-specific exclamation of pain from a non-specific homosapientexacanus)
If I’d known about it before, I certainly would not have been able to express my disgust so… specifically.
Thanks, Chris
This is for you, for all of us.
Lyre Bird - Imitating Sounds [it shouldn’t but because of us…] - David Attenborough
P.S. Not about birds but I hope this makes you smile.
Jessica, a large and very special being. The evening massage under the baby blanket slays!
I have been in love with Jessica ever since yesterday.
Whoa, completely sidetracked by the lyrebird, whose imitation of the chainsaws cutting down its forest just made me cry.
(Composes self)
(Composes poem)
Early August
after University Diaries
I take Gilly for a walk at night
carrying only his leash.
At the end of the porch
he lifts his leg on the pee-mail bush
but forgets to read his messages.
There is a menacing humidity
of rainstorms which might not actually happen.
Last night we thought we heard bickering
In the house a few doors down;
tonight we were sure.
They were definitely bickering.
We walk by. Nonchalant.
Gilly is barefoot, but that’s not relevant.
We can’t hear the sea, because we live in Vermont.
But we’re pretty good at pretending.
We’re really good, too, at looking like we’re in a rush
When in fact we’re not sure we’re going anywhere with this.
This morning, it felt like Friday;
the Great Dog Above reminded us that’s because it was.
We cast no shadows, because it was dark out,
with not much moon. I’d like to say that
there was a church, but there wasn’t:
only a gray cat reigning and the dump Gilly took behind a bush,
As if he, too, hated poetry.
Gilly is a fucking GENIUS.
Oh, and that slant rhyme scheme (chalant, levent, vermont) is too much indicative of skill with and enjoyment of language, and is thus non-Simician.
Everyone’s a critic.
Especially alliterators.
Mr. striped tail feathers of sharp-shinned hawks.
I do love your last stanza.
I’m with Gilly.
My man, Laurie of http://www.poemsbyanoldreprobate.blogspot.com, says that they gave the job to the wrong person.
Or, otherwise, that it must have been a Presidential choice.
I made myself a sandwich to eat.
It was pastrami on a piece of dark rye bread
Slathered with yellow mustard
A piece of iceberg lettuce on that
And atop it all, an identical
Piece of dark rye bread with mustard
Except that in this case the mustard
Was facing the bottom of the sandwich
With a feeling of intense foreboding
Strong enough to kill each and every one of you
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha;
Ha ha ha ha.
Before today I’d never heard of Simic, but he seems the perfect choice for a Bush-led nation.
The cuteness continues with three guinea pigs and a cucumber.
Caution: may cause heart to explode.
Perhaps Simic will be asked to compose a commemorative poem for the Minneapolis bridge disaster. He would be treading in the footsteps of another great poet;
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
re Jessica: One thing I would have been sure, up to now, of never seeing was a video of a hippo bedding down for the night in a pink blankie.
Rob G wins.
Except that this guy (from what little I’ve seen) isn’t even that interestingly bad.
Fork
This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.
As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless and blind.
Charles Simic
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out hiking and found a bald, blind, deformed bird stabbing meat with its foot.
“every once in a while a son-of-a-bitch like Jeffers” - My favorite son-of-a-bitch hands down! Also, not coincidentally, one of only two poets whose work I really enjoy - the other being Gary Snyder, of course (who, I assume, also cares about the names of birds. although perhaps not so much the Linnean or white-man names).
Shine, Perishing Republic
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
and home to the mother.
You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it
stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the
thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—
God, when he walked on earth.
—Robinson Jeffers
I like Simic. I also like Mary Oliver and Robinson Jeffers. I guess I don’t understand people who want all poets to write in a certain way or address a certain set of concerns.
(Fun parody, though!)