America has a new Poet Laureate

Congratulations to Charles Simic, UNH Professor Emeritus who has been chosen as the U.S. Poet Laureate. Mr. Simic replaces another talented New Hampshire poet, Donald Hall. Charles Simic won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for his book of prose poems The World Doesn't End (1989). His Walking the Black Cat, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry in 1996. In 2005 he won the Griffin Prize for Selected Poems: 1963-2003. Simic will publish a new book of poetry, That Little Something, in February 2008.

Against Winter

The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.

A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,
The bare branches reached after them in vain.

Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier
Of a defeated army, you'll stay at your post,
Head bared to the first snow flake.
Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,
You're crazier than the weather, Charlie.

Charles Simic