Charles Simic

“Making art in America is about saving one's soul.”

“This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell.It resembles a bird’s footWorn 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 fistIs large, bald, beakless, and blind.”

“Charles Simic, when asked what he thought of Slam Poetry events: "They are fun, but they have as much to do with poetry as Elvis Presley had to do with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk".”

“Because the light is always with usand the hush of an early morningtime propitious to plain speechspace between the premonition and the eventthe small lovely realm of the possible.”

“I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!”

“I left parts of myself everywhere,The way absent-minded people leaveGloves and umbrellasWhose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck”

“When you play chess alone it's always your move.”

“«ظلُّنا واحدٌ.لكن ظلُّ مَنْ منّا؟أودّ أن أقول:«لقد كان في البدايةوسيكون عند النهاية»،لكن لا يقين في ذلك.ليلابينما أجلسخالطا أوراق صمتنا،أقول له:«مع أنّك تلفظ كلّ واحدة من كلماتي،فأنت غريبٌآن لك أنْ تتكلم».”

“The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine… While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you’re making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might’ve thrown them out with last spring’s cleaning. It’s snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing.”

“The stars know everything,So we try to read their minds.As distant as they are,We choose to whisper in their presence.”

“Here in the United States, we speak with reverence of authentic experience. We write poems about our daddies taking us fishing and breaking our hearts by making us throw the little fish back into the river. We even tell the reader the kind of car we were driving, the year and the model, to give the impression that it’s all true. It’s because we think of ourselves as journalists of a kind. Like them, we’ll go anywhere for a story. Don’t believe a word of it. As any poet can tell you, one often sees better with eyes closed than with eyes wide open.”

“The truth is dark under your eyelids.What are you going to do about it?The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.A meek little lamb you grew your woolTill they came after you with huge shears.Flies hovered over open mouth,Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,The bare branches reached after them in vain. Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldierOf a defeated army, you'll stay at your post,Head bared to the first snow flake.Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,You're crazier than the weather, Charlie.”

“Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.”

“To submit to chance is to reveal the self and its obsessions.”

“Silence is the only language god speaks.”

“Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.”

“Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.”

“A true confession: I believe in a soluble fish.”

“One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.”

“The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.”

“In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.”

“For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.”

“While you sitLike a rain puddle in hellKnitting the socks Of your life.”

“The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then-poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.”

“Poetry is an orphan of silence.”

“He who cannot howl will not find his pack.”

“When people ask me how to find happiness in life I tell them, First learn how to cook.”

“Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket”

“Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other.”

“A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.”

“If the sky falls they shall have clouds for supper.”

“Lyric poets are always corrupting the young, making them choke in self-pity and indulge in reverie. Dirty sex and direspect for authority is what they have been whispering into their ears for ages.”

“If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.”