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 released more than sixty poetry books in the USA and abroad, as well as numerous essay collections and a wealth of translations of French, Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian poetry.

Simic is considered, and rightfully so, one of the most important and original poets of postwar American poetry. In addition to the Pulitzer and the International Griffin Poetry Prize, he received many other awards, such as the Frost Medal (2011) for his "lifetime contribution to letters," the Wallace Stevens Award (2007), awarded by the Academy of American Poets, and the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award (2014). He was poetry editor of the Paris Review for many years. 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 thoughtful depth, ingenious staging, and subtle irony, which is why many critics have described them as "surreal" and "Kafkaesque." The themes he deals with vary—from the most everyday and mundane to the most painful and tragic, 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 he published. It was released one year before his death. Many of its poems naturally deal with death, such as the poem "The Wind Died," probably the last one the poet wrote. The verses with which it ends also constitute, with a slight variation, its title: "My little boat,/ Take care./ There is no/ Land on the horizon."