### Charles Simic, Explorer of Dusk Charles Simic, who died on the 9th of this month, gave the world a poetry as accessible as Frost’s. His poems can be enjoyed by readers of any background or sophistication, though his ironies of diction are the reward of deeper readings. By the end of the 20th century, with the last resources of French Symbolism and English Romanticism exhausted, Eastern European poets–Simic among them–formed a renaissance of imagination and a vital witness against totalitarianism. Simic’s vision, unlike the scientific one, reveled in the incomplete and the unfinished, through what Keats called “negative capability”. Jonathan Aaron, reviewing Simic’s collection *Unending Blues* in 1987, observed “[a]gain and again, Simic evokes the atmosphere of dusk, where known shapes threaten to change according to a logic that eludes us”. For half a century, Simic was our foremost explorer of dusk. His skill at the epigram and mastery of a minimalized, proselike style contributed to his viral shareability. But *The Pierian* today celebrates his career of insight, his sense of the past, and his wariness of those who promise brighter futures. From “Reading History”: I’m given a glimpse @ret Of those condemned to death @ret Centuries ago,@ret And of their executioners.@ret I see each pale face before me @ret The way a judge @ret Pronouncing a @ret sentence would. @ret Marveling at the thought @ret That I do not exist yet. @ret @ret With eyes closed I can hear @ret The evening birds. (Photo Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39896978)