He aimed to be as succinct in his criticism as he was in his poetry. Reviewing his “Selected Prose” in 1989, the poet Anne Stevenson wrote: “He dislikes woolly theorizing and evinces a healthy distrust of verbiage spun out of important-sounding abstractions. In a climate of criticism too much given over to theories and isms, his lean, accurate prose should be honored and made welcome.”

He himself once suggested that “descriptions of poetry written by men who are not poets are usually ridiculous, for they describe rational thought processes.”

“I couldn’t invent myself as a boy who has grown up in Iowa and lived in America all his life...I wanted things reflected through me with as little interference from me as possible, as if my language were coming from someone who didn’t have a language.”

Simpson’s life-long expatriate status influenced his poetry, and he often uses the lives of ordinary Americans in order to critically investigate the myths the country tells itself. Though he occasionally revisits the West Indies of his childhood, he always keeps one foot in his adopted country.
The outsider's perspective allows him to confront "the terror and beauty of life with a wry sense of humor and a mysterious sense of fate," wrote Edward Hirsch of the Washington Post.
(--Poetry Foundation)

“I don’t envy popular writers their success...The feeling I have when I read something that matters...is the object of life, the reason we are born, live, and die.”
from In the Room We Share by Louis Simpson

www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/arts/louis-simpson-a-pulitzer-prize-winning-poet-dies -at-89.html?pagewanted=all

Poetry Foundation Link:
www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/louis-simpson

Youtube: Poet Louis Simpson reads from The Owner of the House
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kk3Fe83MdU

You're a fountain of knowledge Zed; I learnt something new today. Thanks.