Remembering a Great Poet and Friend

There was no poet or dinner companion quite like Charles Simic. He had a fondness for quatrains and absurdity, wine and dessert, the restraint of form and excess of food. And there was no poet whose work was quite like Charlie’s, either. His poetry—melancholy, absurd, surreal, sensuous, funny—was shaped by his experiences growing up in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during World War II and then emigrating as what was then called a “displaced person,” first to France, where his family was detained, and then to the United States.