Charles Simic

Today is the birthday of Charles Simic, born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), in 1938. I love what he had to say about the writing process:

"I write to annoy God, to make Death laugh. I write because I can't get it right. I write because I want every woman in the world to fall in love with me."

When asked how one should prepare for a life in poetry, he answered, "There's no preparation for poetry. Four years of grave digging with a nice volume of poetry or a book of philosophy in one's pocket would serve as well as any university."

Dušan Simić, known as Charles Simic, is a Serbian American poet and former co-poetry editor of the Paris Review. 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.