Charles Simic’s first poems were published in 1959, when he was twenty-one years old. His first collection, What the Grass Says, was published the following year. Since then, he has published more than sixty books of poetry in the U.S. and abroad, as well as numerous collections of essays and a wealth of translations of French, Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian poetry.

Simic is rightly considered one of the most important and original poets of postwar American poetry. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize and the International Griffin Poetry Prize, he has received many other awards, such as the Frost Medal (2011) for his “overall contribution to literature,” the Wallace Stevens Award (2007), presented by the Academy of American Poets, and the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award (2014). For many years, he served as poetry editor of *The Paris Review*. He taught American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of New Hampshire from 1973 until his retirement.

His poems, written in clear and unpretentious language, stand out for their contemplative depth, ingenious imagery, and subtle irony, which is why many critics have described them as “surreal” and “Kafkaesque.” The themes he explores vary—from the most mundane and commonplace to the most painful and tragic, which are very often related to his personal experience as an immigrant who learned to write poetry in a language that was not his mother tongue.

This collection is the last one he published. It was released a year before his death. Many of the poems in it, naturally, deal with the theme of death, such as, among others, the poem “The Wind Has Died”, maybe the last ever written by the poet. The closing verses, with a slight variation, also serve as the title of the collection: “My Little Boat/ Take care/ There is no/ Land in sight.”