ABSTRACT
The language Charles Simic uses to describe his religious quest reveals his fondness for a mystical and apophatic approach to God. In the midst of his equivocating, however, religion remains deeply personal for Simic, particularly where the focus on institutional practices gives way to moments of encounter with the sacred. This chapter discusses briefly from direct engagement with Simic’s poetry in order to establish the relationship between apophaticism in the medieval and the postmodern deconstructionist contexts. Simic’s apophatic mysticism reaches towards moments of transcendence that remain firmly harnessed to the physical realities of the world. Simic’s metaphysical suspicions work in the same manner as Vladimir Lossky’s assessment of the role of apophaticism in the Eastern Church: “an existential attitude which involves the whole man,” not separated from the experiences of everyday life. The playful, wry tone of Strand’s work resembles the tone of many of Simic’s poems, particularly those where Simic avoids his darker, gallows humor.
