Charles Simic (1938–2023) — Green Buddhas and Garden Roads
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 9, 1938
Dearest reader,
On this day, we celebrate the birth of Charles Simic (books by this author), a Serbian American poet whose voice resonates as one of the most compelling in modern poetry.
Born in Belgrade during turbulent times, Simic’s work often carries the haunting shadows of war blended with whimsical insights, a unique blend that earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for his collection The World Doesn't End.
Beyond accolades, he served as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States in 2007, bringing his sharp yet tender perspective to a broad audience.
Simic taught English and creative writing for over three decades at the University of New Hampshire, shaping generations of writers with his imagistic, surreal poetry. His poems often explore themes of nature, identity, and absurdity, as he famously reflected,
Even when I’m stretched out in my coffin, they may find me tinkering with some poem.
Consider this excerpt from his poem In The Traffic:
What if I were to ditch my car
And walk away without a glance back?
While drivers honk their horns
As I march toward the woods,
Determined, once and for all,
To swap this breed of lunatics
For a more benign kind who dwell
In trees, long-haired and naked.
I’ll let the sun be my guide
As I roam the countryside, stopping to chat
With a flower or a butterfly,
Subsisting on edible plants, I find,
Glad to share my meal with deer,
Or find a bear licking my face
As I wake up, asking where am I?
Stuck in the traffic, Mister!
And from his brief yet vivid poem Watermelons:
Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.
Dear reader, do these images not beckon you to embrace nature’s wild charm and to find poetry in the simplest moments?
Charles Simic’s legacy reminds us to look beyond the chaos and rediscover the wonder in everyday life—whether among bustling streets or quiet woods.
