Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Simic, Charles (Vol. 130) - Peter Schmidt (essay date Fall 1982)

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Peter Schmidt (essay date Fall 1982)

SOURCE: “White: Charles Simic's Thumbnail Epic,” in Contemporary Literature, Fall, 1982, pp. 528-49.

[In the following essay, Schmidt analyzes White, finding elements that strongly liken the series to the tradition of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson.]

O how joys, dreads, convolutions, human shapes, and all shapes,
spring as from graves around me!
 O phantoms! you cover all the land and all the sea!
O I cannot see in the dimness whether you smile or frown upon me. …

—Whitman, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (1867 version)

A chaque être, plusieurs autres vies me semblaient dues.

—Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer

These are examples of Reason's momentary grasp of the scepter; the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous instreaming causing power. The...

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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