Charlie Simic and the "Great Poets' brawl of '68"

Charles Simic files this report in the NY Review of Books blog.

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Back at Louis Simpson’s house in Stony Brook, during the farewell party on the last night of the conference, a fight broke out. People were standing in pairs or groups on the huge lawn sipping their drinks and, without any hint that something was about to happen, fists started flying. When a few tried to break it up, a punch would head in their direction and they would in turn join the melee. I stood on the porch watching in astonishment with the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra and the French poet Eugène Guillevic. They were delighted by the spectacle and assumed that this is how American poets always settled their literary quarrels; I tried to tell them that this was the first time I had seen anything like that and it scared the hell out of me, but they just laughed. Looking back, I, too, have to admit that what we saw was pretty funny.
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Comments

[cher]

I absolutely freaking love this! I'm going to go watch the beginning of Cocteau's Orpheus again, the only other example I can think of of a poets' brawl. I love that the surrealists watched decorously from the porch, like a sonnet.