While the speaker of a poem is not the poet, per se, it’s hard to deny the influence of Charles Simic’s personal history and life story on his poetry. As a prolific American poet, Simic thus produced a large body of work characterized by a uniquely distinctive voice. Simic’s poems, including “The Partial Explanation,” are an alchemy of his experience and environments. As a child, he survived the violence of World War II, repeatedly evacuating his home with his family to avoid the bombings that flattened Europe. Simic jokes, “My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin.” The dark humor is a signature of Simic’s work. Even in what could be considered the bleakness of “The Partial Explanation,” there is a lightness of spirit to the lines “[a] glass of ice-water / keeps me company” (Lines 10-11).

Simic was a teenager when he immigrated to the United States. His family, reunited after his father left Belgrade to work in Italy, spent a year in New York before settling in Chicago. His father took him to jazz clubs, where he developed a love for both form and improvisation. Simic was off to a fast start, publishing his first poems when he was 21 and an undergraduate of the University of Chicago. He went to New York, where he kept company with poets Allen Ginsberg, John Berryman, and Frank O’Hara before he was drafted into military service.