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There is a nimble beauty to the poetry of Charles Simic that, given his Eastern European origin, makes many readers think of clever fairytale heroes, witty orphans who can charm any ogre with words alone. Yet Simic is vehement about his place in American culture. In a 1984 interview with Sherod Santos, he said, "As for Yugoslavia, I feel like a foreigner there. Everything I love and hate with a passion is over here. I'd die of grief if I left this country for long." Still, Simic's work is like no other American poet's. On the one hand, Sigmund Freud's world of dreams and the surrealism of Andre Breton are graphically represented; on the other, an abundance of peasants, crones, and woodcutters reminds the reader that, to use an agricultural metaphor, no poetic apple falls far from its tree. (In the Santos interview, Simic said, "I'm not so naive as to pretend that there aren't certain East European elements in my poetry.") While it may be said that Simic is a mythical rather than a historical poet, his role is somewhat more specialized than that of the mythmaker; he is a broker of dreams and images, one who, like those witty youths in the fairy tales, draws on both grim experience and natural playfulness to charm and intoxicate his audience.
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