“Charles Simic, when asked what he thought of Slam Poetry events: "They are fun, but they have as much to do with poetry as Elvis Presley had to do with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk".” — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
“Lyric poets are always corrupting the young, making them choke in self-pity and indulge in reverie. Dirty sex and direspect for authority is what… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
“There’s a book called “A Dictionary of Angels.” No one has opened it in fifty years, I know, because when I did, The covers… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
“The truth is dark under your eyelids. What are you going to do about it? The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
“The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.” — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
“The Something" Here come my night thoughts On crutches, Returning from studying the heavens. What they thought about Stayed the same, Stayed immense and… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile To be healed. There's a… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
“هندوانه بودای سبز بر پیشخوان میوه فروش لبخندش را گاز میزنیم و دندانهایش را تف میکنیم :: Watermelons Green Buddhas On the fruit stand. We eat the smile And spit out the teeth.” — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator. — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
“The idea is to spin the wheel of metaphors and images until sparks of associations begin to fly for the reader.” — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects, such as Duchamp's "Fountain"-urinal as sculpture) abolish the separation between art and life.… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the… — Charles Simic Copy Share Image
