Biography

Early years

Dušan Simić was born in Belgrade, then part of Yugoslavia. Growing up as a child in war-torn Europe shaped much of his world-view, Simic states. In an interview from the Cortland Review he said, "Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me. In addition to my own little story of bad luck, I heard plenty of others. I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed in my life."

Simic immigrated to the United States with his family in 1954 when he was sixteen. He grew up in Chicago and received his B.A. from New York University. He is professor emeritus of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives on the shore of Bow Lake in Strafford, New Hampshire.

Career

He began to make a name for himself in the early to mid-1970s as a literary minimalist, writing terse, imagistic poems. Critics have referred to Simic poems as "tightly constructed Chinese puzzle boxes." Simic has stated: "Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is merely the bemused spectator." He writes on such diverse topics as jazz, art, and philosophy. He is a translator, essayist and philosopher, opining on the current state of contemporary American poetry. He held the position of poetry editor of The Paris Review and was replaced by Dan Chiasson.

Simic was one of the judges for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize and continues to contribute poetry and prose to The New York Review of Books. Simic received the US$100,000 Wallace Stevens Award in 2007 from the Academy of American Poets. He was selected by James Billington, Librarian of Congress, to be the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, succeeding Donald Hall. In choosing Simic as the poet laureate, Billington cited "the rather stunning and original quality of his poetry".

Awards

• PEN Translation Prize (1980)
• Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship (1983)
• MacArthur Fellowship (1984-1989)
• Pulitzer Prize finalist (1986)
• Pulitzer Prize finalist (1987)
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1990)
• Wallace Stevens Award (2007)
• Frost Medal (2011)
• Vilcek Prize in Literature (2011)
• The Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award (2014)

Bibliography

Poetry collections

• 1967: What the Grass Says
• 1969: Somewhere among Us a Stone is Taking Notes
• 1971: Dismantling the Silence
• 1972: White
• 1974: Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk
• 1976: Biography and a Lament
• 1977: Charon's Cosmology
• 1978: Brooms: Selected Poems
• 1978: School for Dark Thoughts
• 1980: Classic Ballroom Dances
• 1982: Austerities
• 1983: Weather Forecast for Utopia and Vicinity
• 1985: Selected Poems, 1963-1983 (1986 Pulitzer Prize finalist)
• 1986: Unending Blues (1987 Pulitzer Prize finalist)
• 1989: Nine Poems
• 1989: The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry)
• 1990: The Book of Gods and Devils
• 1992: Hotel Insomnia, Harcourt
• 1994: A Wedding in Hell: Poems
• 1995: Frightening Toys
• 1996: Walking the Black Cat: Poems, (National Book Award in Poetry finalist)
• 1999: Jackstraws: Poems (New York Times Notable Book of the Year) ISBN 0-15-601098-4
• 2000: Selected Early Poems
• 2001: Night Picnic, ISBN 0-15-100630-X
• 2003: The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems ISBN 0-15-603073-X
• 2004: Selected Poems: 1963-2003, 2004 (winner of the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
• 2005: Aunt Lettuce, I Want to Peek under Your Skirt (illustrated by Howie Michels)
• 2005: My Noiseless Entourage: Poems, ISBN 0-15-101214-8
• 2006: Monkey Around
• 2008: 60 Poems, ISBN 0-15-603564-2
• 2008: That Little Something: Poems, ISBN 0-15-603539-1
• 2008: Monster Loves His Labyrinth, ISBN 1-931337-40-3
• 2008: Army: Memoir. In preparation
• 2010: Master of Disguises. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-547-50453-5.
• 2013: New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-547-92830-0.
• 2015: The Lunatic. HarperCollins/Ecco. ISBN 9780062364746.

Collections in translations by Simic

• 1970: Ivan V. Lalić, Fire Gardens
• 1970: Vasko Popa, The Little Box: Poems
• 1970: Four Modern Yugoslav Poets: Ivan V. Lalić, Branko Miljkovic, Milorad Pavić, Ljubomir Simović
• 1979: Vasko Popa, Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems
• 1983: Co-translator, Slavko Mihalic, Atlantis
• 1987: Tomaž Šalamun, Selected Poems
• 1987: Ivan V. Lalić, Roll Call of Mirrors
• 1989: Aleksandar Ristovic, Some Other Wine or Light
• 1991: Stavko Janevski, Bandit Wind
• 1992: Novica Tadić, Night Mail: Selected Poems
• 1992: Horse Has Six Legs: Contemporary Serbian Poetry
• 1999: Aleksander Ristovic, Devil's Lunch
• 2003: Radmila Lazic, A Wake for the Living
• 2004: Günter Grass, The Günter Grass Reader

Prose collections

• 1985: The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry
• 1990: Wonderful Words, Silent Truth
• 1992: Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell
• 1994: The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs
• 1997: Orphan Factory: Essays and Memoirs
• 2000: A Fly in the Soup: Memoirs
• 2003: The Metaphysician in the Dark
• 2008: The Renegade
• 2015: The Life of Images

[ Source: Wikipedia ]