Charles Simic's first book, What the Grass Says, has a kind of rock-bottomed simplicity, a simplicity that is spiritual enough to qualify, I think, as a unique clarity of heart. Most of Simic's poems are about looking at small, modest things and seeing the sense in which they are, indeed, compounded of the stuff of poetry….

The completeness of Simic's commitment to inwardness [evident, for example, in his poem Stone] strikes me as very impressive. Subjects seem chosen for unpromisingness, according to the usual terms of both poetry and Life On Earth. There are poems about waking up, rivers, the poet's own hand,… extinct species, a roach, etc. Yet these simple subjects are always falling open, to reveal other trapdoors to other worlds. It is almost as if Simic were setting up as clear a horizontal area as possible, preparatory to his leap into vertical, lyrical space. The...