Shared war memories in the poetry of Charles Simic and Dragutin Tadijanovic

¶ … Friend's History Composition Project

Marko

After reading your essay the Same, but Different Histories about Charles Simic and Dragutin Tadijanovic and their powerful poetry, I was intrigued by the shared histories that both poets used for inspiration. Your introduction showed how both poets wrote about their painful memories, as Simic and Tadijanovic each came from war torn backgrounds in Serbia and Croatioa respectively. I especially liked how you mentioned the same feeling a reader experiences when first encountering the poems of Simic and Tadijanovic, because after reading them myself, I also felt that the poets shared the same memories. It is important to remember, however, that Simic's life in USA influenced his poetry differently than Tadijanovic's life fighting in both World Wars and the Croatian war for independence. You made this observation in your introduction, and it left me wondering how an American lifestyle might affect a poet's ability to write about tragedies in their memory. When you wrote that "it is different to observe your past from secure place than living it in fear and experience it on your own skin," this remark stuck with me because I can relate to the different emotions that come from security and from being scared.

The poems you chose to include in the essay were also very interesting, and I thought Simic's "A Wall" was very moving and emotional. By describing each of the four stanzas used by Simic in "A Wall," you were able to capture the haunted memories that the poet used as inspiration. When you observed that "A Wall" may be referring to the last wall left in Simic's childhood home after his neighborhood was bombed, I thought you interpreted the meaning of his words perfectly. The statement "Maybe that room was his home, his room and everything what left from it is a wall and a fly" made me think about how an intelligent young child must feel when something senseless like bombing changes their life. After reading your essay, I searched for more of Simic's poetry to read because you found a way to make his words make sense.