Jaroslav Seifert

Junior tells of the games he played in his mind during the eight days he was trapped in his house after the devastating January 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti. Includes author's note about Haitian children before the earthquake and her own children's reactions to the disaster.

Seifert's poetry is strongly situated within the Czech literary tradition of Poetism, which evolved into a playful, lighthearted refuge from world history while maintaining an edge of social consciousness. The playfulness of Seifert's early poetry expresses itself in anecdotes and witty aphorisms, and relies importantly on such sound patterns as alliteration, assonance, and euphony. Dana Loewy's adept translations maintain the play and verve of Seifert's originals: the sensuality, eroticism, Epicureanism, and humor of Seifert's work is stunningly evident. Beyond its obvious aesthetic interest, Seifert's early poetry also has a specific historical value as a manifestation of the avant-grade in the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s. Loewy's perceptive introduction to the volume provides a historical and cultural context for Seifert's work.

In 1984, Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986) was the first Czech to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although Seifert lived through the many historic turns of his homeland, his was not a political poetry, except in its constant expression of love for his homeland, its beauties and its values. He was the great poet of Prague, of love, of the senses. His work was unpretentious, lyrical yet irreverent, earthy, charming. Seifert was known for the simplicity of his verse, yet his poems are full of surprises, never what at first they seem. They are marked by imagery that is beautiful or comical, by good, deep values, and by love in all its forms. This is a collection of poetry written throughout his life.