“In Memorium: Simon Perchik, 1923-2022” by Navinder Virdi

Simon Perchik was a widely-published poet born on December 23, 1923, in Paterson, New Jersey. He lived with his parents and five siblings behind their store when the Great Depression affected his father’s silk-weaving business. During World War II, he joined the Army Air Corps, flying over 35 missions overseas. During his time in the army, Perchik earned the rank of first lieutenant. Afterwards, he made use of the G.I. bill, which allowed him to go to college. He enrolled in New York University and earned his bachelor’s degree in English and L.L.B. in law. Starting in 1950, Perchik practiced law privately, until 1975, when he took a job as an Assistant DA — Environmental Prosecutor for Suffolk County. In 1980, he decided to retire from the law and take up writing full time. He was once referred to by Library Journal as “the most widely published unknown poet in America.” On June 14, 2022, Simon Perchik died in New York City at age 98, surrounded by his family.
Here at MORIA, we considered Simon Perchik a friend. When we saw one of his packets of poems come in to the submission queue, we knew we were in for something special. We published him nine times during our first five years, which encompasses the following poems: "[From the same magic spell that's not air]" (Issue Six); "[It was a ritual, a simple splash]" (Issue Six); "[Side by side everything rises as if your breath]" (Issue Six); "[You are reading this ticket out loud, over and over]" (Issue Six); "[You can't tell what death is saying]" (Issue Six); “[Her chest no longer listening]” (Issue Four); “[You hold this stone to your cheek]” (Issue Four); “[This leaf shutting down]” (Issue Two); “[You inhale the way this sand]” (Issue Two). According to our Founding Editor, Dr. Linda Dove, his work was quirky (he eschewed titles, for instance, preferring an asterisk or nothing at all), surrealist, powerful, and often included an end line that resisted its own ending. He was a master of the swerve and the left-field ball; right at the moment when you might be expecting a grand flourish, he instead would give you a unfinished thought, a half-baked line, a subtle quiet. He had that prescient ability to imitate the way life really is — always abruptly changing the terms.
His first-ever published book was I Counted Only April in 1964 out from The Elizabeth Press. From that point on, Perchik was consistently publishing new pieces in many prestigious publications. As he became better-known in literary circles, he did an interview with Ideas and Images, talking about his writing process: “I usually write in coffee shops . . . [or] the chicken house, that little deli in East Hampton.” He would normally be found writing in shops that were frequented by people. He explained that writing is a lonely venture and, by being around people, it became less lonely.
What made his poetry somewhat unusual is that Perchik often used photographs as prompts, as ekphrastic exercises: “I take a photograph and it’s not important to what the photograph has.” No matter what the content of the photograph, Perchik would use it and break down the contents. The reason he chose to use them was the discipline that came with starting and finishing a poem based on something else. He would begin by taking six to seven pages of notes, in which he would describe the photograph: “I get on the page everything that I can see in the photograph, then what I will do is get a book on mythology.” He did this to identify a conflict that he saw occurring within the image itself; by trying to figure out what meaning the photograph might convey, he could then spend weeks in his poem resolving the conflict he had identified.
The purpose and meaning that Perchik was looking for when he created poems would tap into the reader’s emotions “through this process of contrast and essence.” Perchik remarked that he aimed for creating a poem that included many perspectives. He hoped to make it unique and open to interpretation, so never spent time in a poem explaining what a reader should feel: “What I do is not to give a narrative, not to tell you something, not to lecture you, but to be a bit like music.” He was looking to move people in his poems without them completely understanding why. He used the tension that occurs within the image itself to make sure that there is conflict that could be resolved and, in so doing, create more emotions.
As Dr. Dove mentioned above, one thing that makes his poems stand out is that none of them have titles: “You don’t write down the title,” he said, “because that may fix it too much.” Perchik wanted to make sure that readers were free to imagine what they think the poem is about, and he believed that having a title would limit the reader’s imagination, not allowing them to feel a range of emotions: “I light up fields of reference that I’m not even thinking of, but the reader will pick up.” He wanted to make sure that the reader is sucked into the poem unknowingly, making it ultimately more powerful.
MORIA was sad to learn that Mr. Perchik had left us but honors the very many years he devoted to poetry. He was a consistent supporter of this magazine, for which we will remain grateful. May his memory be for a blessing and his work continue to inspire:

— you return to sand, lie down

with these small stones and pollen
ripening as if a root so enormous
would never again be thirsty

would caress your cheeks with grass
that has no other home, is thinning out
its great rivers and later on.

— from “[You inhale the way this sand]”