News at Eleven: A: I didn't write any poetry when I

was the poet laureate. Nobody ever does. You can't write poems when talking about poetry every day for 10 hours. You want to talk about baseball or movies or making good pasta. Most of the activities were really pleasant, but I only stayed for one year, because it's very demanding if you want to do it right. You get endless invitations, and it gets to be quite busy, especially these days now that you have e-mail. The old days were much better! My life kind of stopped for that year.

from Times Union: Poet Charles Simic to read from forthcoming collection, 'Master of Disguises'

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