Charles Simic, 15th Poet Laureate of the United States, conducted a reading in Forum Hall Wednesday night. President Jon Wefald, the English Department at K-State and Claflin Books supported the reading. 

Charles Simic immigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia at age sixteen. Since then, he has written seventeen collections in English and has translated poetry from languages such as Macedonian, Slovenian, French and Serbian. 

Elizabeth Dodd, creative writing chair, opened with an elegant and insightful introduction of Simic, beginning with a brief biography and ending with an exploration of some of the themes within his work. The themes included the supernatural world, squalor, sex, and small moments. He read aloud from his collected works. 

“You always feel challenged when someone says such nice things,” Simic joked after the introduction, with the slightest Slavic accent. He quickly transitioned into his first poem of the evening, “Shelley,” an homage to the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

“Shelley spoke of a mad, blind, dying king,” he read, his voice rising with import. Then a new tone of conversational story-telling came with “[The Chinese restaurant] had a three-fingered waiter/ Who’d bring my soup and rice each night/ Without saying a word.”

About the writing of the poems from that time Simic explained, “This was the ‘80s and nothing really happened to me then. I just kind of moped around feeling sorry for myself. And really kind of enjoying it.”

The next poems, “Cockroach” and “Factory,” with their animal figures and odd images, received a lighter response. But it wasn’t until he read “My Beloved,” a poem he claimed was an example of “applied art,” or art with a purpose, that the audience really relaxed. 

“In the fine print of her face/ Her eyes are two loopholes/ No, let me start again,” he stuttered for effect.  “Her eyes are flies in milk/ Her eyes are baby Draculas/ To hell with her eyes/ Let me tell you about her mouth.” The poem went in that direction, and then Simic stopped when a woman laughed to say, “That was a naughty laugh.”

Between each poem, he told a relevant story. One was about wandering through the streets of New York City. Another depicted him talking to cockroaches in the kitchen of his cruddy apartment, and yet another was about the tallest rooster in New England, which he saw but did not meet.  

His final poem, “In the Planetarium,” portrayed a celestial spectacle through the eyes of one miserable audience member: “‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ I said/ Just as her upraised eyes grew moist/ And she confided to me, much too loudly,/ ‘I have never seen anything so beautiful.’”

Senior Lauren Benson described the reading as “highly entertaining.”

“Simic was easy to listen to and his images remain in my mind long afterward,” Benson said.

English Graduate Student Luke Redington was surprised to hear the poet read aloud what he had long been reading on his own. 

“When I interact with Simic’s work, I’m reminded how accessible poetry can be,” Redington said. “We always need to reach out to a poem but I feel Simic’s work reaches back.”