Sixty Poems

Here are sixty of Charles Simic's best known poems, collected to celebrate his appointment as the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.

KLIATT

Simic is the Poet Laureate of the United States, and his poetry is accessible to nearly all readers, even those not so comfortable with poetry. He writes about travels to foreign places, and walks in nearby woods: "You give the appearance of listening / To my thoughts, O trees, / Bent over the road I am walking / On a late summer evening / When every one of you is a steep staircase / The night is slowly descending." The poems here have been collected from eight different volumes of his poems, published between 1986 and 2005. Reviewer: Claire Rosser

CHARLES SIMIC was born in Belgrade and emigrated to the United States in 1954. He is the author of many books of poetry and prose. Among other honors, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and served as the Poet Laureate of the United States in 2007-2008.