PBS News Hour

and finally tonight the new poet laureate of the United States Jeffrey Brown has our conversation for 35 years Charles simic has lived in a house on Bow Lake in the town of Stratford in Southern New Hampshire here simic wrote numerous volumes of poetry one a Pulitzer and other prizes he's a prolific essayist and author of a delightful Memoir of his youth in many ways he fits the profile for a poet laureate but there is at least one interesting twist Poet Laureate is a long way to come for a kid who didn't really speak English until 15. it astonished me I mean right but you know when they called me and after I realized precisely what you were what you were saying uh that I uh ended up being a poor lawyer to the United States you know starting you know in belgrads uh expecting that I would continue to live there for the rest of my life but then lots of things happened and the history happened didn't it history happened simic was a child when Germany bombed Yugoslavia in World War II he remembers being thrown from his bed by a bomb that destroyed a nearby building his earliest years saw occupation Civil War and the beginnings of a stalinist regime in his homeland simic's father made his way to the U.S but along with his mother simic and his younger brother were arrested trying to flee it wasn't until 1954 that they were allowed to leave first to Paris and then with the help of a refugee Aid agency to the U.S the family settled outside Chicago I used to joke I used to say uh Hitler and Stalin is thanks to them that I became an American poet the sense of history is everywhere in your writing in your poetry and in your prose well a history from the point of view of an individual who is in the midst of uh events that are Beyond his or her control um let me report as a historian can also I mean write about the leaders the great battles the military successes I mean we've been having the sort of epic poetry I mean that's not you it's not me I mean I I write from you know the point of view of somebody who a refugee on the road I remember my brother once a poem and about the Bosnian war in the in the 90s and uh there was just a quite a little bit of sort of footage of a of a woman with two little kids and she's running down the road some Road God knows who she is or uh where she's growing I said well this is me and my mother uh and uh my brother uh running and they just repeats itself uh so yes I mean poet is the one at my kind of poet is the one who notices such things December 21st these wars that end only to start up again somewhere else like Barbara's Clippers or like these Winters was their Bleak days one can trace back to Cain all I've ever done it seems is go poking in the ruins was a stick until I was covered with soot and Ashes I couldn't wash off even if I wanted to Cinna came to the University of New Hampshire in 1973 now a professor emeritus he's taught several generations of students and continued his own writing first starts in a little notebook like this I mean this is just bits and pieces so it all starts this way it starts this way simex wife Helen was also born in Yugoslavia but the two met in New York they call themselves City people who happen to have left City Life long ago to raise a daughter and son here in the relative piece of Woods and Water so a lot of the experiences you write about come from the city but you write them by the lake it's true precisely I much more to learn observant when I'm in the city than in the country I'm still a stranger here and I I stranger after what 35 years it's a great Stroke of Luck when it comes to poetry simic once wrote that human beings do not know themselves very well if we had this self-knowledge if we had you know ideas about who we are what we are uh I mean it would be very difficult to write poetry I mean the best things that happen in problems are discoveries they're they're accidents what comes out of their imagination out of our deepest self out of our memory and uh when they're good they're always surprises the absentee landlords surely he could make it easier when he comes to inquiries as to his read about reign in our foolish speculation silence our voices raised in anger and not leave us alone with that curious feeling we sometimes have of there being a higher purpose to our residing here where nothing works and everything needs fixing the least he could do is put up a sign way on business so we could see it in the graveyard where he collects the rents or in the night sky where we address our complaints to him one of your newest poems is called my turn to confess and it begins a dog trying to write a poem on why he barks that's me dear reader yeah well that's that's the way I mean I think of myself I mean we are all Barking at the Moon we're all barking at something Injustice out there one thing that I see in in your essays about poetry is that you issue any Grand pronouncements you don't like to say poetry's role is this or poetry should do that I hate that I mean uh it reminds me so much uh of Communism I mean they used to have you know party congresses uh and uh they would say you know Soviet writers must do this The Poets the great Soviet Union should now our points are best when they're completely left alone uh they'll do what they please uh and uh if they're lucky they'll write some you know good work okay but here you are and you've accepted this very public position Poet Laureate Point Laureate well I'm going to remind people uh you know of that I'm going to remind them that uh you know what poems can bring to readers uh what poetry is good for as it were and and when you tell them what poetry is good for what are you going to say I remember once I was teaching in the schools El Paso Texas and a student had asked in a class asked me what the Poetry was good for and I was stunned because it's such a serious question it's a difficult question and suddenly a hand went up I was a young woman so I said you know what do you think and she said to remind people of their own Humanity that struck me as some sensible so moving so poignant to remind people of their own Humanity you know I'm mortal I exist I have my own conscience I have my own being myself here I am or this universe maybe there's a God maybe there's no God this is my predicament my human predicament poetry but reminds readers of that