c>OUT WITH LARKIN, IN WITH SIMIC
             My overall perception of Simic's poetry is that he is a fun guy. At times he is much more dramatic than I anticipated his poetry to be. I found myself still thinking about his poetry hours after I read it and slowly understanding some of it. He is much more difficult to analyze than our dear friend Larkin but alas change is good. His first poem I chose, "Bug Doctor", because I felt I could add interpretat it intelligently.
             The self or persona of the poem "Bug Doctor" to me is Charles Simic. He is depicting a conversation he is having with a bug or more specifically a mosquito. He obviously has some sort of issue with bugs that I find hilarious to read. I believe he is the persona because he writes so much on bugs and because he uses "my"(3) to define the speaker. The setting is not clear, it could be a public place like a park where there is a large population. These lines are the private thoughts of Simic on a public issue of the annoying "night visitor" (1) the mosquito.
             Structurally this poem is divided into three stanzas that depict the author's changing feelings about the mosquito. The first stanza shows how the author is making fun of the life of the mosquito. He asks it questions about it's existence and whether it has feelings "do you fear?" (1). He is mocking the mosquito's existence by pointing out that some become lab specimens that are "crucif[ied]... with pins" (6) while other's fate lies on the whim of a person, like Simic who smashes them. The second stanza depicts the mosquito's unanticipated terror" (15) like that of any victim of unexpected violence and death. The final stanza is the author's feelings of realization that he and the mosquito are similar in some ways such as "the perplexity and serious trouble" (18) that the mosquito has found itself in. Simic suddenly is not so heartless about the
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