Tad Richards on Charles Simic (from Greenwood Encyclopedia)

Surrealism in any medium always has to struggle to overcome a certain staginess, a sense that the artist has assembled apparently dissonant objects or images just to show that he can do it. But Simic created an organic surrealism in which the real melded almost seamlessly with the strange, just as he evolved a persona in which the America of blues, jazz, highways and cities blended with the Eastern Europe of dark folk tales. Perhaps the only other writers who combine these strains are Vladimir Nabokov and Andrei Codrescu. But Nabokov, who first came to America at the age of 40, writes about America from the point of view of a European cosmopolite. Codrescu was only a few years older than Simic (20 to Simic's 16) when he emigrated, but that seems to have been enough to make a difference. Codrescu, who has become a radio personality, retains his Romanian accent, and views America as a bemused and deeply fascinated outsider. Only Simic brings such a complete blend of American and old world sensibility to his work. Even his speaking voice seems to naturally combine flat American vowels with a Balkan lilt.