Novica Tadic is Serbia’s leading poet and the linguistic heir to Vasko Popa. With this translation, US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winner Charles Simic brings the full range of Tadic’s dark beauty to light:

I dream how on a flat surfaceI set down knives of various shapes and sizes.Already there are so many of themI can’t count them,or see them all. Someone’s being done inby those knives.

Novica Tadic has won most major Serbian literary awards, including the prestigious Laureat Nagrade. Charles Simic’s latest poetry collection is That Little Something (Harcourt, 2008).

Novica Tadic is Serbia’s leading poet and the linguistic heir to Vasko Popa. With this translation, US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winner Charles Simic brings the full range of Tadic’s dark beauty to light:

I dream how on a flat surfaceI set down knives of various shapes and sizes.Already there are so many of themI can’t count them,or see them all. Someone’s being done inby those knives.

Novica Tadic has won most major Serbian literary awards, including the prestigious Laureat Nagrade. Charles Simic’s latest poetry collection is That Little Something (Harcourt, 2008).