News at Eleven: Like so many other young Yugoslavs

Dušan [Simić (Charles Simic)] played chess as a child. The poem he recited on ABC News on the George Stephanopoulos show was Prodigy. It is about the lad who learnt the game from a retired professor of astronomy, who grew up bent over a chessboard, using chipped pieces and missing a white king. It ia a poem about growing up in Belgrade during the Second World War.

from ChessBase News: Charles Simic: 'I grew up bent over a chessboard'

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