For senior English major Jake Kinstler, former United States Poet Laureate Charles Simic pleasantly surprised him with his craft as well as his personality at the Annual Walt Whitman Lecture.
“I had no idea he was so multi-genre talented, and way funnier than I thought,” said Kinstler. “The poems I read were really dark, but the poetry he read had a really light, really humorous tone to it.”
Simic read his works in the Maxey Hall Auditorium on Thursday, April 9. The lecture was open to Whitman students, faculty and staff members, as well as Walla Walla community members.
The Walt Whitman Lecture, in the past, has included poets such as Louise Glück, Adrienne Rich, Billy Collins and last year’s Richard Wilbur. Unfortunately, due to lack of funding, the Walt Whitman Lecture will not occur next school year. Creative writing professor and director of the Walt Whitman Lecture Katrina Roberts hopes for the best “once the economy turns around.”
Born in Yugoslavia in 1938, Simic is professor emeritus of American Literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. He has won numerous awards including, among others, a Guggenheim Foundation Scholarship, a MacArthur Foundation Scholarship, the Edgar Allen Poe Award, the Wallace Stevens Award and the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
A celebrated and award-winning poet, Simic entertained audiences with his poems from many of his works, including his book of poetry “The World Doesn’t End,” which was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
“The problem with [this book] is that things are so hard to find because there are no titles,” said Simic jokingly about “The World Doesn’t End”, which is filled with untitled prose poems.
The poetry Simic read, described by many as both “meditative and fantastical”, also had a ticklish edge to it, often evoking laughter from the audience.
“I was stolen by the gypsies,” read Simic. “My parents stole me right back. Then the gypsies stole me again. This went on for some time.”
In an introduction by Roberts, she described Simic as “our most disquieting muse” whose poetry is “a feast in a time of plague.” With his combination of trauma, drama, fantasy and wit, Simic describes himself and his own writing as “surrealist with a purpose.”
“His work is so fantastic, verging on frightening, particularly in his earlier work,” said Kintsler. “But after this reading, I think I’ll read some of [his work] lighter and more humorously.”
In a smaller lecture for creative writing students earlier in the day, Simic described his attention to humor in his writing.
“Comedy is fundamentally related to our existence as human beings,” said Simic. “We could not bear our difficulties without humor.”
During the small lecture, he frequently referenced one of his newest books, “The Monster Loves his Labyrinth,” which he described as a compilation of “notebook entries, travel scraps” and a number of “moments’ thoughts.”
