Charles Simic

[from Charles Simic's Wonderful Words, Silent Truth]

My poems (in the beginning) are like a table on which one places interesting things one has found on one’s walks: a pebble, a rusty nail, a strangely shaped root, the corner of a torn photograph, etc. . . . where after months of looking at them and thinking about them daily, certain surprising relationships, which hint at meanings, begin to appear. . . .

The poem is the place where one hears what the language is really saying . . .

It’s not so much what the words mean that is crucial, but rather what they show and reveal. The literal leads to the figurative, and inside every poetic figure of value there’s a theater where a play is in progress. . . .

The poem that thinks . . .

The poem is an attempt at self-recovery, self-recognition, self-remembering, the marvel of being again.