[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 22943]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 CONGRATULATING THE 15TH POET LAUREATE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now 
proceed to S. Res. 304.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the title of the 
resolution.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (S. Res. 304) congratulating Charles Simic on 
     being named the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States of 
     America by the Library of Congress.

  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the 
resolution.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution 
be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider 
be laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolution (S. Res. 304) was agreed to.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  The resolution, with its preamble, reads as follows:

                              S. Res. 304

       Whereas Charles Simic was born in Yugoslavia on May 9, 
     1938, and lived through the events of World War II;
       Whereas, in 1954, at age 16 Charles Simic immigrated to the 
     United States, and moved to Oak Park, Illinois;
       Whereas Charles Simic served in the United States Army from 
     1961 to 1963;
       Whereas Charles Simic received a bachelor's degree from New 
     York University in 1966;
       Whereas Charles Simic has been a United States citizen for 
     36 years and currently resides in Strafford, New Hampshire;
       Whereas Charles Simic has authored 18 books of poetry;
       Whereas Charles Simic is a professor emeritus of creative 
     writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, 
     where he taught for 34 years before retiring;
       Whereas Charles Simic is the 5th person to be named Poet 
     Laureate with ties to New Hampshire, including Robert Frost, 
     Maxine Kumin, Richard Eberhart, and Donald Hall;
       Whereas Charles Simic won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 
     1990 for his work ``The World Doesn't End'';
       Whereas Charles Simic wrote ``Walking the Black Cat'' in 
     1996, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for 
     Poetry;
       Whereas Charles Simic won the Griffin Prize in 2005 for 
     ``Selected Poems: 1963-2003'';
       Whereas Charles Simic held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1984 
     to 1989 and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim 
     Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts;
       Whereas Charles Simic earned the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the 
     PEN Translation Prize, and awards from the American Academy 
     of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and 
     Letters;
       Whereas Charles Simic served as Chancellor of the Academy 
     of American Poets;
       Whereas Charles Simic received the 2007 Wallace Stevens 
     Award from the American Academy of Poets; and
       Whereas on August 2, 2007, Librarian of Congress James H. 
     Billington announced the appointment of Charles Simic to be 
     the Library's 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry: Now, 
     therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) congratulates Charles Simic for being named the 15th 
     Poet Laureate of the United States of America by the Library 
     of Congress; and
       (2) directs the Secretary of the Senate to transmit an 
     enrolled copy of this resolution to Charles Simic.

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