Charles Simic is a Yugoslavian poet, essayist, teacher and translator. With 20 published collections of poetry, five books of essays, a memoir, and numerous books of translations, Simic is recognized by the Poetry Foundation as "one of the most visceral" poets of today.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simichttp://ec2-184-73-186-136.compute1.amazonaws.com/contributors/charles-simic/ He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and simultaneously, the Wallace Stevens Award and appointment as US Poet Laureate.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic Simic emigrated to America from Yugoslavia when he was a teenager, and went on to teach English and creative writing for more than 30 years at the University of New Hampshire.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic

Hudson Review contributor Vernon Young wrote "Simic, a graduate of NYU, married and a father in pragmatic America, turns, when he composes poems, to his unconscious and to earlier pools of memory. Within microcosmic verses which may be impish, sardonic, quasirealistic or utterly outrageous, he succinctly implies an historical montage - his Yugoslavia is a peninsula of the mind...He speaks by the fable; his method is to transpose historical actuality into a surreal key...[Simic] feels the European yesterday on his pulses."http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic

Simic writes in English, despite being Yugoslavian, and uses his experiences of war-torn Belgrade to write poetry about the physical and spiritual poverty of modern life.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic The result, says Hudson Review writer Liam Rector, is work that “has about it a purity, an originality unmatched by many of his contemporaries”. Simic's work has always scored well with critics, but it has only been since the 1990s that his work has received public approval.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic Simic's early childhood coincided with World War II, and when he was 15 his mother arranged for the family to leave Belgrade for Paris. A year later Simic traveled to America to meet with his father, who had been working in Italy. He took an interest in poetry once the family moved to Chicago and he could attend high school.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic By 1959, when he was 21, his first poems were published.http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/27 He was drafted into the US Army in 1961 and by 1966 had earned his bachelor's degree from New York University while working at night to cover the tuition costs.http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/27 Simic's first full-length collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published in 1977 and he has since published more than 60 books in the United States and abroad, with 20 of his own poetry titles among them.http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/27

"He is one of the wisest poets of his generation, and one of the best,"—Georgia Review correspondent Peter Stitt on Simichttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic

"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships,"—Charles Simichttp://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/charles_simic

"When you start putting words on the page, an associative process takes over. And, all of a sudden, there are surprises. All of a sudden you say to yourself, ‘My God, how did this come into your head? Why is this on the page?’ I just simply go where it takes me,"—Charles Simic on the creative processhttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic

"At least since Emerson and Whitman, there's a cult of experience in American poetry. Our poets, when one comes right down to it, are always saying: This is what happened to me. This is what I saw and felt. Truth, they never get tired of reiterating, is not something that already exists in the world, but something that needs to be rediscovered almost daily,"—Written in Simic's essay Poetry and Experiencehttp://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/27

• What the Grass Says, 1967
• Somewhere Among Us a Stone Is Taking Notes, 1969
• Dismantling the Silence, 1971
• White, 1972
• Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk, 1974
• Biography and a Lament, 1976
• Charon's Cosmology, 1977
• Brooms: Selected Poems, 1978
• School for Dark Thoughts, 1978
• Classic Ballroom Dances, 1980
• Austerities, 1982
• Weather Forecast for Utopia and Vicinity, 1983
• Selected Poems, 1963-1983, 1985
• Unending Blues, 1986
• Nine Poems, 1989
• The World Doesn't End, 1989
• The Book of Gods and Devils, 1990
• Hotel Insomnia, 1992
• A Wedding in Hell: Poems, 1994
• Frightening Toys, 1995
• Walking the Black Cat: Poems, 1996
• Jackstraws: Poems, 2000
• Selected Early Poems, 2000
• Night Picnic, 2001
• The Voice at 3:00 a.m.: Selected Late and New Poems, 2003
• Selected Poems: 1963-2003, 2004
• Aunt Lettuce, I Want to Peek under Your Skirt, 2005
• My Noiseless Entourage: Poems, 2005
• Monkey Around, 2006
• Sixty Poems, 2008
• That Little Something: Poems, 2008
• The Monster Loves His Labyrinth, 2008http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simichttp://www.jstor.org/pss/27560951