Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Simic, Charles (Vol. 130) - Christopher Merrill (review date 19 March 1995)

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Christopher Merrill (review date 19 March 1995)

SOURCE: “Moments Frozen in Time,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 19, 1995, p. 8.

[In the following review, Merrill praises Simic's historical sense in A Wedding in Hell and The Unemployed Fortune-Teller.]

Where shall we place our faith, in the individual or in the tribe? For Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic the answer is a function of poetry itself: “Lyric poets perpetuate the oldest values on earth,” he reminds us. “They assert the individual's experience against that of the tribe.” Those values, needless to say, are under attack around the world. Religious fundamentalists, ardent nationalists, tribalists of every color and moral suasion—all seek to diminish the worth of individual experience. Born in solitude, the poem celebrates freedom, the ideologue's enemy; hence the sad history of poets in exile—or worse. As the Russian poet Osip...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Hayden Carruth (review date Summer 1971)
   2. James Atlas (review date February 1975)
   3. Richard Jackson (essay date Winter 1980)
   4. Peter Schmidt (essay date Fall 1982)
   5. Bruce Bennett (review date 12 March 1983)
   6. Charles Simic with Sherod Santos (interview date 1984)
   7. Kenneth Funsten (review date 16 March 1986)
   8. Peter Stitt (review date Spring 1987)
   9. Marci Janas (review date Spring 1991)
   10. Steven Cramer (review date January 1992)
   11. Ileana A. Orlich (essay date Spring 1992)
   12. Edward Hirsch (review date 21 December 1992)
   13. Lisa Zeidner (review date 21 March 1993)
   14. Tam Lin Neville (review date Spring 1993)
   15. Philip Miller (essay date Summer 1993)
   16. Scott Edward Anderson (review date November-December 1993)
   17. Judith Kitchen (review date Winter 1995)
   18. Christopher Merrill (review date 19 March 1995)
   19. Helen Vendler (essay date 1995)
   20. Charles Simic with Molly McQuade (interview date 1995)
   21. David Sofield (review date 13 January 1996)
   22. David Bafer (review date April 1996)
   23. Paul Breslin (review date July 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright