Charles Simic

It was during his UNH teaching years that he won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1984. In his career, he would publish more than 30 books of poetry. His daughter Nicky Simic told the audience at his on-campus memorial service that indeed, toward the end of his life, he was writing feverishly, and happily. Despite the pandemic, he seemed to be getting his second wind, she said.

Simic accepted the job offer to become an assistant professor at UNH eagerly: he bought an orange VW beetle, packed up his family (wife Helen, daughter Nicky and son Phillip) and drove cross-country from Santa Rosa, California, to Northwood, New Hampshire.

And where some would expect culture shock, says Nicky, “it was love at first sight for my father … he loved the community in Northwood, and he loved his students.”

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner noted in his obituary about Simic that his work “would look back on not merely his wartime childhood but on the circus of everyday life in Belgrade. His poems were full of folk tales and pickpockets and old grudges. … But he embraced American life. He wrote verse like a man who had escaped a cruel fate and was determined not to waste a moment. His urbane and sardonic poems were increasingly filled with sex and philosophy and blues songs and late-night conversation and time spent at the dinner table.”

He was also the editor of many books, an essayist and a translator of other international poets.

Garner notes that Simic’s work frequently infused the political lessons learned young. “He had a lifelong loathing of strident nationalists and ethnic divides, of what he called, in one essay, ‘so-called great leaders and the collective euphorias they excite,’” wrote Garner.

Yet he was also someone who, according to the collection of colleagues gathered at the memorial service, would stick out his tongue and would chuckle at his own jokes, who relished reading weird newspaper headlines, and who loved cooking, believing the most delicious dishes could be made with the simplest ingredients.

“Nothing pleased him more than a good meal with good friends and a good glass of red wine … he taught me the beauty of simple things in life,” Nicky said.

Others spoke to the audience in Hamilton Smith Hall of Simic’s influence on their work and lives, including poet and playwright Andrew Periale; New Hampshire poet laureate Alexandria Peary ’10Ph.D.; poet and UNH MFA teacher David Rivard; author Jennifer Militello ’93; journalist, essayist and former faculty member Andrew Merton ’67; and author and former faculty member Michael Ferber. Poet Laureate of the United States Ada Limón and Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets Carolyn Forché shared their thoughts via video.

“Charles was original in the only way that counts: his poems were impossible to imagine until he wrote them,” noted Rivard.