Words of Honor

“I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I’ve witnessed in my life,” former U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic once told the Cortland Review. It was this vileness and stupidity -- and the philosophy that “true art must be greater than the person who created it” – that inspired Simic to write, and the Serbian-American poet has gone on to carve a niche as one of the nation’s most lauded bards. His trophies include a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and last year’s esteemed Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.

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• Charles Simic
• Wallace Stevens
• The Academy of American Poets
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“Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat,” Simic once said, “and the poet is only the bemused spectator." This bemused spectator reads from and sign copies of his books at Carson Ballroom at Old Main.