Be safe, Mr. Simic

I can't entirely remember how and why I chose the Simic lines, top, for this blog, except that the book "Night Picnic" sits on my shelf and I knew it to be pithy when pithiness was called for. (Though I do like the synergy of the stanza with my blog title, which I had chosen well before the epigraph.)

I'm not a huge Simic fan--have never felt like I was slipping or being slipped into another world when I read a poem of his. Still, I think he's a fine choice for Poet Laureate, the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.

My book is inscribed "For Angela, Charles Simic"--but I don't really remember getting it signed.

Some years ago, I interviewed Simic by email for an article in a weekly magazine, in advance of his reading here. I scribbled and thought and crossed out and hawed for days, trying to strike the right tone somewhere between witty and bland. I had been writing for papers just long enough to know that clever can backfire, but had not been out of an MFA program long enough to be cold to the lure of fame's proximate heat.

I'm glad to rediscover, based on the notes that fell out of the back of Night Picnic, what I did NOT ask, but darned if I can remember what I did. Can't find the archived article online, too lazy go go upstairs to clips file. Can't remember much about the reading, can't remember approaching Simic afterward to have book signed, can't remember whether I confessed that I was the same Angela who interviewed him. I don't think I did; too nervous and shy.

Good thing I was such a low-voltage writer.