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By Shelley Gollust and Caty Weaver
2008-5-22
HOST:
Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC in VOA Special English.
(MUSIC)
I'm Doug Johnson.
Today we tell about some country music award winners ...
Answer a listener's question about the founding fathers, and mothers, of the United States ...
And report on the nation's poet laureate.
(MUSIC)
Charles Simic
HOST:
Charles Simic has served as America's poet laureate for almost a year. He says he will not seek a second year because he wants to spend more time writing. Barbara Klein tells about the man and his poetry.
BARBARA KLEIN:
Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in nineteen thirty-eight. He says he spent his early years avoiding bombs dropped by German and Allied forces during World War Two. He became one of the millions of displaced persons.
He said the experience provided him with his own little story of bad luck as well as those of many other people. His poem, "Prodigy," speaks of his wartime life. Here he reads it:
(SOUND)
Charles Simic came to the United States when he was sixteen years old. He lived with his parents in Chicago, Illinois. His first book of poems was/published when he was just twenty-one. He served in the Army and later graduated from New York University. Mister Simic is a retired professor of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire, the state where he still lives. He also writes essays about art, ideas and beliefs and music.
The poet can speak several languages. He has translated poetry by writers in French, Serbian and other languages. Mister Simic said being poet laureate of the United States was an especially great honor because, he said, "I am an immigrant boy who didn't speak English until I was fifteen."
Charles Simic has written more than twenty books of poetry. He has won a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize. The same day he was named Poet Laureate he won the Wallace Stevens Award for Mastery in the Art of Poetry. The award, given by the Academy of American Poets, comes with a one hundred thousand dollar prize.
Last month, Charles Simic/published a new book of poetry called "That Little Something."
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