SOURCE: A review of Selected Poems 1963-1983, in Los Angeles Time Book Review, March 16, 1986, p. 9.

In the following review, Funsten provides an overview of Selected Poems 1963-1983, finding that Simic's later work is neither as startling nor as evocative as his earlier poems.

At night some understand what the grass says. The grass knows a word or two. It is not much. It repeats the same word Again and again, but not too loudly … 

The best poems by Charles Simic harbor an enigmatic simplicity, contain an evasive weight to them. Influenced by riddles, parables and nursery rhymes, Simic populates the folk world of his poems with simple objects and puzzling omens. His poems have the atmosphere of a Bruegel feast day, without any of the people.

Born in Yugoslavia in 1938, Charles Simic spent his childhood watching Europe turn into rubble. “it's always evening / In an occupied country. / Hour...