Charles Simic’s “Crazy About Her Shrimp”
August 6th, 2007Save as PDF
Charles Simic’s “Crazy About Her Shrimp.”
The new Poet Laureate of the USA is Charles Simic, born in Belgrade in 1938. The New York Times announced his appointment with the headline "Charles Simic, Surrealist With Dark View, Is Named Poet Laureate."
I have read the story that ran beneath this headline and I find little or nothing to support “Surrealist” or “Dark View.” Well, a lot of poetry is surreal. It looks beyond and through everyday reality to find something additional, often rising from the unconscious. And as for “Dark View,” we live in dark times and he writes about the experience of living now. That might just qualify Simic as a realist. In any event, he is an interesting, often very funny poet and you might want to get to know him better. His book The Voice at 3 A.M. is a good place to start.
Below, just to provide you with a taste of something from the new laureate that The Times would not, here’s one of my favorite non-surreal, non-dark poems by the gloomy Yugoslav, Charles Simic. (I wonder what the President would think about his new Head Poet if he read this poem!)
Crazy About Her Shrimp
By Charles Simic
We don’t even take time
To come up for air.
We keep our mouths full and busy
Eating bread and cheese
And smooching in between.
No sooner have we made love
Than we are back in the kitchen.
While I chop the hot peppers,
She wiggles her ass
And stirs the shrimp on the stove.
How good the wine tastes
That has run red
Out of a laughing mouth!
Down her chin
And onto her naked tits.
“I’m getting fat,” she says,
Turning this way and that way
Before the mirror.
“I’m crazy about her shrimp!”
I shout to the gods above.
