A Sim[i](ala)c(rum) of Mattering (Post 666)

While there was hardly even a susurrus in most circles, it was announced today that Charlie Simic will be our 15th Poet Laureate. While the job description is as opaque as a J train window, cheers, rah rahs, and gewgaws are supplied by yours truly to his former teacherman. Live free or die, you ole bastard (I use "ole" to connote that I don't really think his offspring to be, well).

Should you be so bored as to click thru, don't be put off by him being called a surrealist. Nary a dripping clock or miro miro on his lit wall. Reporters can't be expected to research. Charlie's as accessible as apple pie and hatred of Hitler:

I’m sort of the product of history; Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents. . . . If they weren’t around, I probably would have stayed on the same street where I was born. My family, like millions of others, had to pack up and go, so that has always interested me tremendously: human tragedy and human vileness and stupidity.

Lest you forget (and I forgive you, Charlie, for the improper [in America] use of "which"):

Fork

This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird's foot
Worn around the cannibal's neck.

As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.


(Off-topic: Me, AK, and DPStyles tried to mod a boombox two+ yrs ago. We tried for reals, not realizing benefits of cardboard.)