Charles Simic (19382023) was a poet, essayist, and translator who won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. From 2007 to 2008 he was U.S. Poet Laureate. A native Serbian speaker, he published English translations of many poets from the former Yugoslavia.
Every now and then, words, quite often in the form of poetry, have the power, the persuasion, and the all-penetrative ability to stop one in ones' tracks. . . . Such is the possibility, the sheer scale of the penetrative persuasion amid some of these poems. ---David Marx, David Marx Book Reviews Runner-Up for the 2011 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, PEN American Center Winner of the 2011 Robert Frost Medal, Poetry Society of America Charles Simic has been translating so many stimulating poets from the former Yugoslav republics for so long that I snatch up any new version by him as soon as it appears. ---John Taylor, Antioch Review