Long Shots
Berenice Abbott’s detail-laden photographs of a long-ago New York City enrapture Charles Simic so thoroughly that the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past.
Charles Simic is a Serbian-American poet. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for The World Doesn't
End, and was a finalist of the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for Selected
Poems, 1963-1983 and in 1987 for Unending Blues. He was appointed the 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007, and was co-poetry editor of the Paris Review.
Silent Genius
He never cracked a smile on screen, but Keaton’s silent films are as funny as anything Hollywood ever made. Also melancholy, profound, and … but let’s go with funny.
Refugee Poet
Want an interesting life to write about? In the foreword to the new collection American Odysseys: Writings by New Americans—which features works by Daniel Alarcón, Dinaw Mengestu, Téa Obreht, and Yiyun Li, among others—former poet laureate Charles Simic argues that since refugees never fit in to their new countries, they channel their perpetual turmoil into literary richness.