It’s Simic’s World, We Just Live in It

By Neal 

As if getting the keys to the poet laureate car wasn’t enough success for one man in one day, Charles Simic also just won the Academy of American Poets‘ 14th annual $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award for “mastery in the art of poetry.” Why? Because he’s “a poet of immense, humane consideration,” in the words of Academy chancellor James Tate. “He carries our souls around in his back pocket like a map of the lost world.” I bet now you’ll skip happy hour on August 21 to go see him read in Bryant Park, huh?