Poet Charles Simic

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Charles Simic is a poet that sees a pair of shoes as something more. He uses such vivid imagery to describe them and what they mean to him. I spoke with Mr. Simic in early February about his poem “My Shoes” and asked why he wrote some of the things he did. The poem started out dark and finished as a happier and more positive poem. To open the interview I ask Mr. Simic, “when you state ‘With your mute patience, forming/ the only true likeness of myself,’ are you talking about your shoes?” I ask this because shoes do not talk nor could they have patients because they are not living things. Simic responded, “It is only figuratively speaking. I know shoes do not talk and I know they cannot have patients, I am just trying to give them personality because they are the topic of the poem,” was Simic’s response. I notice he talks highly of his shoes in the last stanza, and he says that they are his only true likeliness about himself, so I decided to bring this up in the interview. “Well do you really mean that the shoes are the only thing you like about yourself?” Simic answers, “well, I am not going to say I do not like anything about myself, nor will I say that I like everything about myself. What I will say is that my shoes will always be there for me, they will always be positive, and they will never get mad at me; hence when I say they are mute and patient. So yes I love my shoes and they are a true likeliness of myself.” “Well if you like your shoes so much why do you decide to start the poem out with a gruesome outlook on the shoes in the first stanza?” “ I just wanted to give the readers a visual of the shoes and look at them differently. Whoever thought of shoes to have gaping toothless mouths? It took me a while to picture this. I also wanted to set a mellow tone to possibly make the reader think more. “Mr. Simic, why did you decide to share the

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